Who are the People of the Book Today? -Mufti Abu Layth

Would you say the people of the book still exist today excluding Muslims? Um Yes, of course. I find this whole people of the book thing very interesting because what was the purpose of this people of the book? The people of the book was a way to build bridges. I think not only does that exist, but maybe it can be extended.

Because you see, you could say the people of the book were you know, the the Jews and the Christians, but then in the text it's extended to the Majus, the Zoroastrians, the Persians. You see, that's interesting because the Persian dynasty which was such a superpower and the Christians who were there were a superpower as well, and Islam primarily focused on them because of the shared heritage, but then it started to extend it to the Persians.

And in many ways the Persians went on to perhaps help Islam and Muslims much more than the Christians ever did. Because Muslims kind of took all the administrative structures from the Persians. As the Persians came under Islam, Muslims inherited the the kind of aristocracy and their whole system of how to run things. Hence, the Abbasids were much more developed than the uh Umayyads.

Because the Abbasids kind of welcomed the Persian that kind of Persianization of the administration. But um so I find that really interesting that and I think in this day and age we ought to be able to with each the had extend that further because in the prophet's time the main adversary that was polluting the minds of people with superstition was it was it was shirk and the mushrikin.

It was not the it was not necessarily the Zoroastrians and it was not the Persians, and it was not the Christians or the Jews that were polluting the minds of people with superstition. So, the the main adversary was kind of set the the ideological adversary, and then with the others bridges were built. And I think in many ways the narrative has today changed, and we ought to kind of be revisiting some of these things.

I I think that's me in my understanding of Allahu Alam. The problem is today Muslims ourselves become the main problem to tawhid. We've become the people of superstition. The irony is Muslims today are the people of superstition. So, we believe in so much superstition, it's shocking. It's like we believe in all sorts, you know, it's like oh uh magic, demons, bad omens, don't do this on this day, don't do this on that day, you know, like we're like we are so full of superstitions.

So, it's that's a disappointing. And in many ways in many ways I'm not I know this is going to sound really shocking, but in many ways the new age kind of critical atheists and people like this in many ways resemble the first age Muslims and Wahidien, the people of tawhid. Because what these people are doing is what the early Muslims were doing.

They were critiquing tradition, they were critiquing uh superstition, they were and it's just um it's it's amazing. I I think like wow. Let's take some questions, people. Let's take some questions.