Hassan Kettani - Why imams must be indigenous | Mufti Abu Layth

uh there was a quick one i'll uh mention that you see you know some of these people now people may say i should not be on social media to which i would say it's not your dad's internet but you know there's reasons why some imams

see they don't understand the culture of where of their audience especially sometimes from the muslim world i say i don't really accept him as a share but um you know he obviously he has some knowledge i'm not saying he's he's not like a common person like he definitely has read certain books and things like he teaches presents himself as a chef

now he is from a household of many like so it's a huge family uh in north africa morocco specifically that for you know for decades if not maybe a couple of centuries have had great scholars great mahadevin great people who memorize absolute hadith and all of this fast forward to the current day and age there still are several amongst the whole because it's a huge family huge family within morocco the katani family involved in politics involved in all kinds of things

but you've got amongst them these these two there's two brothers in this particular family you've got hamza kattani and hassan kathani now hamza kathani is different he uh is quite sufi inclined and um and i fee and and definitely more learned as well but and then you've got hassan kathani who is not really that learned a bit more when i say that learn it as in like proper the way you expect from the arab world you know you expect like because when you're looking at that world you're expecting a different level

of caliber so he's not on that level but he's obviously like of an ost status he has gone through certain amount of things and certain amount of learning he is coming from more a selfie background a wahabi kind of perspective he seems to have in the last maybe decade or so or less than a decade but seems to have embraced the maliki method seems to have taught that and really used that as a as a tool to kind of i suppose teach people in europe teach people in america and he teaches online

but cello you know there's not whatever you know if people want to teach they want to do things up to them really you know it's nobody else's business and i've got nothing against that now here is a clip however where he's speaking on certain uh issues and it gets into racism i don't know if you guys can hear this he is an old woman or black says this is an old black or older black people don't pay attention to her but if she's a very beautiful black that means

dark-skinned woman we don't call we don't say that she's allowed to be uncovered near people he's talking about maybe maids or or slaves in the days of slavery or stuff like that but even dark-skinned people near dark-skinned people they they desire each other oh my god women that are very beautiful to other people

actually when you go back and see when you go back and see do these people really believe in freedom of speech this part is about freedom of speech it is only a big fat lie that is a big lie why because they are not allowed to discriminate homosexuality so there's no if you speak about homosexuality you will go to jail in in europe in the west therefore there's no freedom of speech if you speak about the negroes between brackets or the black guys

and discriminate them and say that they are so-and-so or make fun of them you will go to jail i think about the jews what the hell was that what the hell was that i mean the first part the homosexual part i thought okay well you can understand culturally in the arab world or in the muslim world or in other countries there's strong homophobia so if you speak against homosexuality you can go to jail they're trying to say you haven't got freedom of speech so okay you can you know see the angle he's coming from at least you can

whether you agree with it or not but you can understand okay he's trying to come from this angle because he's obviously he would clearly condemn and speak against constantly homosexuality so he's saying well you know you can't do that in the west so where's your freedom of speech but then he's like well if you're to speak about the negro and you're thinking what what the hell is he on about what it's not a laughing matter what the hell is this guy on about seriously this is a prime example of why

people when we speak of ulama in the west scholars islamic scholars in the west we need people who are indigenous to this culture who understand now whether he meant something else and that's just because his english is poor uh i don't know on the first clip where he's speaking about a text about certain women that need to cover up and he says well an old woman doesn't need to cover up or a black woman doesn't need to cover up and then he says well you know look this um you know sometimes

there are some uh black women who can be beautiful to black people and you think [Laughter] is making it worse what the hell is even saying like that's so stupid what the hell is that you know it's like i think they can't help it the the anti-blackness so pours out of them it's like what what is that even [Laughter] what does that even mean that there's some dark-skinned people that i'm sure they are attractive to some other dark-skinned people it's like what this guy actually does he actually know what he's saying

[Laughter] for god's sake honestly and this is the problem that they you see this is why we have to be weary sometimes when we are like obviously we there are many scholars in obviously the muslim world and sure by all means benefit from them but be weary don't blindly follow these people and if they say something a bit if they say something dumb and stupid recognize it as dumb and stupid right so don't be like now he you see he was saying oh but i'm

reading this in some classical book now you have to understand look in the olden books sorry in the old odin the golden book right so in the old classical texts you may find elements which are like you may find certain points that are utterly absurd you may find anti-blackness in certain texts there are certain fatawa where you will find this where people will say things like like what he's reading this text of like or from the earlier scholars where they

will say oh well if uh if it's a black woman she doesn't need to cover up properly she doesn't need to do the hijab because people ain't that interested in her now you see when you read things like this the truth of the fact is that look those people those scholars right are a product of the environment the environment was wrong okay it had discrimination in it maybe that they i i don't believe that those people were going around being cruel to people that were black and things like maybe some were but i don't believe

those scholars were and things like that but they had these views without even understanding anything bad about them because to them 700 years ago this is what the world was so i'm not talking about trying to get that scholar and everybody demonize him because the scholar lived 700 years ago people 700 years ago may have had these views but they felt that that's the way the world was but we can recognize the view today is wrong we can say look that view is wrong okay this it's it's racist

it is unacceptable but look somebody said it 800 years ago that's how they viewed the world it's not about trying to make him that person a villain because that person wasn't he was just speaking how his day and age spoke so okay you know he may have generally been a very intelligent and normal and absolutely a civil human being so i'm not speaking about boycotting scholars obviously i love our legacy generally in the whole feki legacy but it doesn't mean these people were perfect they had blemishes they had cultural

biases they had so when we see something that's wrong just acknowledge it say that look that's wrong fine but otherwise you know the scholar in other things you can take it don't you don't need to justify it you don't need to kind of defend a stupidity that's like racist and then to justify in that way [Laughter] where he's saying look that's just making it worse that you know look there are some dark-skinned people that i'm sure some dark-skinned people must

find them attractive what the hell is he on about like that's just so that's so bang out of buddha saying that because but may okay maybe english his english is the you know he doesn't understand what he's saying but that just comes back to prove the point you need to really we need to have indigenous scholars who understand the culture people with that we're going to wrap this up

right that once again was his explanation people this this is the kind of this is what he probably thought you know i've killed it with that response he probably thought you know what the you're right the text was problematic but my explanation just killed it that you know obviously there's going to be some darks in people that will find that dark skin a woman attracted he probably felt like doing this after it

he's like i've just killed it this this is me i've just like poof it's celebrating time now anyway