Shaykh Saifullah (USA) | Norms, Nikah & Navigating Knowledge | MindTrap#70 | Mufti Abu Layth

thank you [Music] [Music] all right so I take it this time we are alive and with sound let me just bring up the chart

function and just see that we are um all right people who yes alarm right you know every time we are met with a tech issue in some ways I guess that's a metaphor for life huh yes

people and welcome back to today's episode of Minecraft and I've got with us today today's esteemed guest I'll bring the profile picture right before you so you can see it there one moment uh we have Allah Muhammad from USA you can see the profile picture right there um right uh from Chicago who's gone on a spectacular journey of learning right through to Minnesota where he is today

and without further Ado let me just bring assalamu alaikum sure all right for joining us exactly okay for the invitation right it's a pleasure just you know against all the odds against all our I know we'd been planning back and forth on a few occasions and it's just not uh materialized and then today it's Tech issues but you know such alhamdulillah

so uh all of our guests and viewers that will be tuning in that are tuning in right now are people I present to you at such a young age from the prawn swords of God people ah sure it's a pleasure to connect with you to just you know just to engage to learn about your experience let's for

Let's uh for our viewers uh pick it right up from a bit of your backdrop the I mean you're from uh from the United States born and raised in Chicago just looking uh not to stereotype but people looking straight away are thinking so let's take it from the tell us a bit about your story sure

the honor is mine to be here I came here first and foremostly to learn and benefit from your sahaba from Allah bless you in the efforts that you do um like you said yeah you know it doesn't look like um you know myself in the complexion and the color I wouldn't look like a traditional Desi Maulana Joe Pakistan but alhamdulillah you know Allah has blessed me my mom is um German and Irish and a little bit of French I just found out through um technology DNA um 23 and my father is in Pakistan so I'm 50 50 a little bit more than 50 but we'll

equal it out wow so you so you did one of the DNA tests did you yeah yeah because you know every single time I asked my mom she's like you're German and then sometimes she says you're Irish then she's like no you're European so I'm like where do you come from where do I come from so I was like hello Bismillah will do a DNA test they already have everything about me anyway so why not give them a lecture DNA any any surprises come from that yeah the French aspect you know I wasn't my mom did not know that we had I think like eight percent like French so that was a curveball um but I I guess like European in

general it's just like because you know the US is a Melting Pot and you never really know so um it gets pretty close it actually tells you the exact area and region that you're from so it's pretty interesting okay and so born and raised in Chicago correct correct yes we've had a few guests on here from shy town all right yeah I think um

leading that that leave community in mashallah just changing martial amazing a great work my love listen and all his efforts and all the few that are working in Chicago and throughout the US and throughout the world I believe his uh Mufti kamani is still in Chicago was he's he was in Chicago Islamic Center of Chicago he is currently a column now in Dallas where you know that seems to be the new uh the you know the way the Hijra is going to the migration there's some kind of picture that's going on in Dallas I mean subhanallah it's a hub of like um Islam and massage and institutes

Dallas where where it is if you want to get some knowledge just go there oh I like it I like it so okay and yeah so so tell us a bit about your uh your journey because you've [Music] um so I mean you weren't actually born and raised if I could use the term born and raised but you weren't raised Muslim in your very early infancy so yeah talk to us a bit about that yeah subhanallah you know it's interesting how life takes you and Allah you know he gives you opportunities and paths and you know Allah is the greatest and the

most compassion merciful so yeah um that's correct I wasn't raised Muslim um my mom again she's from a you know German background Irish background so she she was raised Christian my biological father he's from Pakistan and like I said so um he's from I think the Karachi area so um I had that and he was Smiley so you know he grew up in a smiley family um so when my parents got married um you know my my biological father wasn't too interested in you know my mom converting didn't force or anything like that so she stayed Christian and um that's how we kind of were raised um unfortunately you know he didn't really pay too big a part of my life

kind of left for my life when I was really young so for that period of time my mom was a single mom working three jobs and um because of that a lot of my time was spent in church and um you know Sunday school and just daycare and the church in general so I grew up for a majority of my young childhood as Christian until um my my mom actually met my father who um just happened from Chicago but just happened to be in that small town you know doing business masha'allah the the jobs and he opened a hotel there and my mom got a job so that was the first interaction my mom had with you know other Muslims other than my biological

father and um due to that she was very curious I mean you know anyone in the US in that time would be curious about Islam so I think they invited her she how she tells the story she says that they invited her for some and you know it opens up doors masha'allah so she came for some food and then um my father and my his friends my uncle and Aunt at that time um it was time for Salah so they said you know we want to pray so you just give us a second we'll just pray and we'll come back so that was the first time my mom got to experience anyone in

her life praying and she was being from a majority Christian redneck area in Southern Illinois he was like what is this um and you know then that's when my father explained that you know we're Muslim and this is how we pray we do it five times a day and she was really um touched by this you know someone could take out that much of their time every single day um to pray so then she went on her own journey and that led her to one of the local massage is in a college town actually so it's quite a bit away about like 45 minutes from the town that she was in okay and she met the daughter of the Imam who was an African-American

um Imam that studied overseas so of course alhamdulillah there was a welcoming um she came in and you know automatically she just said you know I started reading the Quran and I'm growing up a Christian she had a lot of similarities in the Bible knowing some of the stories of the prophets Abraham Moses um Jesus Jesus being the most different but she's how she says it just resonated with her really well and she made a decision to enter Islam so alhamdulillah they had a big party for her she entered Islam and she comes back to my my stepfather at that time who she was working with and she just had a scarf on her neck and my father said there's

something that's different about you and she's she was really happy and she just had that you know that nude that enters the heart and she said you know um yeah I became Muslim so alhamdulillah she she became Muslim and then she had you know a couple people that she knew who were her close friends who started to teach her and like the they say um the rest is um the rest is history they got married and you know wow okay and so your Journey Begins quite early on uh you and um you you set out to madrasa I mean you're what at that time you're put into

Islamic learning at a young age like 11 yeah something like that um actually younger than that I would say about eight or nine eight or nine years old wow so just a year after being like actually entering Islam and starting to learn about Islam a year after that I started mother so okay wow so that's and you're learning and that goes right through so so is that that's the early years are in Chicago is that correct yeah yeah so we were living in a um a small town outside of Chicago about five hours outside of Chicago and uh when you know my parents got married um the question came up about you know

environment and you know um being with other Muslims because especially we were new Muslims and we didn't know too much about Islam so they needed us to put us in an environment where we can learn and we can benefit and we can have friends who are also Muslim so that led my parents to make the decision to move back to Chicago and that's how we ended up back right okay I see and from there tell us what's because what because from there you've gone on to okay you've had some Islamic learning as a as a child but that's different to committing to let's learn let's become an Imam that kind of uh learning is on a whole different part

so yeah what inspired that was it just the natural you know the natural kind of path that you're on or is there something that you thought yeah let's I don't know if anyone thinks like that but for sure that was not my case um you know honestly it was interesting because you know I I did homeschooling um and I had a very interesting um school because it wasn't fully homeschooling but it wasn't fully in person so it was like something they had back then I don't know they still have it but it was a virtual homeschooling so basically I go to my class and my classmates my teachers once a week the rest of the days I'm at home myself with my parents and doing assignments and

they had a whole online portal so um the one week I used to have um in school with my classmates that's where I used to be very curious and we had some Muslims we had some um some people from the Nation of Islam that was my first interaction with them um there are some Christians and there's some Jews actually quite a bit of juice because you know they're very strict about the upbringing and you know teaching their kids just like you know Muslims with a teacher kids Arabic they would teach them Hebrew so they want to have like a homeschooling program so I got put into this place where there's all these different Fates all these different people and that just naturally started my curiosity and I would talk to these kids and um they would ask me things about Islam there's a certain you

know what to certain verses and by that time I've almost completed my hips I mean I'm I'm three-fourths the way there but I always had the problem um of not being able to explain to them what the Quran was saying like the verses the ayat um you know I would always be able to quote the Arabic but I kind of had to like stop there and I would have to get a Quran and um look at it So eventually like you know one of my teachers may Allah bless him um he's one of the famous Quran teachers in Chicago he's I think hundreds of have memorized the Quran with him he was uh he was from um he studied in um Jamia um I think in Lahore so he was

a graduate yeah yeah so he studied from there and he still runs the mother so he's still there um in Chicago he has one on Devon Street which is like the Hub of all the day season the whole Chicago have you ever come to Chicago is like the Hub of all the deities it's the name of a name it's a street yeah it's a street okay yeah it's a street and that street is known for you know the Desi Cuisine actually it's very interesting half of it is like India and half of its Pakistani and half of the street is named after like there's a name that says Gandhi and then um there's a name that says so the streets

are kind of uh is not nationalistic you know people in mashallah when they came here they wanted to really represent so um so he has a branch there on Devon and he used to be the Imam because one of the oldest masjids in um Chicago and he had now he has a branch in Skokie which is a more suburb area so he was the one that actually brought up the idea to me he said you know safe Allah um it's good mashallah you have a very nice voice you can memorize the Quran you you leave that away at that time I was like leading totally and everything but he said um you don't understand the Quran how are you connecting with a deeper level and I said you know what

that's really true at that time my brother had just finished having his third open heart surgery and um yeah so because of that I wasn't expecting that that's like wow so I actually took a whole took the whole thing to a different Notch there it's just like yeah wow damn is your brother okay now yeah he's okay now he's grown up and you know he gets this checked out um they said you know the next time we need to worry about is when he turns 20 but until then he should be fine inshallah um so we have passed all the Milestones so alhamdulillah he was great but like the the time when he was going through all the surgeries I took off a big

portion of time during my hips and anyone who you know did hits you know that that time off is really impactful um you forget a lot and you have to really kind of back Trace yourself so I took that Gap off and during that Gap I said I want to become a doctor I said I'm going to become a doctor um I'm going to um you know um specifically um you know work on people who had like same issues um you know Cardiology with my like my brother um so that was my plan that was the goal that I had in the back of my head but you know Subhan Allah

um my teacher started to like just plan these things into my head and um talking with my mom who's a convert she actually said you know safe Allah I would really love it if you could explain to me the Quran what out feeling it because we used to do actually I used to memorize my lesson my Spellbook and she would open the English and she would I would read the Arabic and she would read the English and like that we would go through page two page by Page um when we had time so I said you know what I really feel like I need to do that I want to connect with the Quran and I was really passionate about it at that time so that's when I made the decision I was like you know what I need to understand the Quran I need to move forward and whatever I need to do I'll

do what a decision huh you know there is something incredibly just so profoundly special about memorizing the Quran um and it always no matter how distant you become or even if you don't um revise it or as as much as one should or you still remain connected to it in a way that very few people are you could just one day hear a certain verse or if you're told about something you would know whether that is a verse of the Quran or not and it's it just leaves an amazing point but that Journey took you

right through to uh Maulana Tariq Jameel Subs madrasa in Pakistan wow so you're staying in Pakistan for a bunch of years as a as a Agora guest yeah actually for me it was very interesting because I grew up in a um DC household in the sense that there was no Urdu spoken my mom actually had a rule that my dad could not speak Urdu with us because she was like I don't know what you're saying so I'm not gonna let you speak it

we only speak German [Music] I wish I wish like the over Munch only speak German yeah no I wish I I tried to start learning German in seventh grade it was just too hard and my mom couldn't help me because she didn't learn it growing up so I kind of lost that as well so we were stuck with English so going to um Pakistan was interesting because um the first year I was there I was completely um you know foreign to anything I did not know what's going on I understood Urdu so by that time yeah I could understand it I just could not respond so my father's like taking

me to like Lahore then take me to Festival did you know all the swear words straight away was that that's the first thing one learns they like well only only the swear words that are associated with when you're getting in trouble by your teachers memorizing Quran only those uh so okay so here you are in Pakistan um wow okay uh you know the whole culture thing and you're there for years ain't you so yeah yeah yeah so I mean so I ended up staying four years there

um you know I so I I got um admission so it was interesting when I was looking for madadas and places to go um my only condition was I wanted to study Arabic I wanted to study in Arabic I didn't want to go through any other language because I felt felt like my whole idea my whole Foundation of studying Islam was based on the fact that I wanted to understand the Quran so I said that you know my main goal is to understand Arabic and have a good connection to that so you know um that led me to Jamia has a name where it's a foundation I'm the mother of Soul or the university now of sahib and um that was interesting because they had all these requirements they had you know specific requirements you had to have

completed SSC you had to spend time in jamaat because it's a completely Foundation so there's a condition of 40 days and I've never spent 40 days in my life um at that time so there we go live my first time it's always the first time people for everything yeah subhanallah so my dad said you know what no he we were determined so he was like you know what I'm going to go beforehand and so the last two months of my heads he went to Pakistan for the first time after like 15 years and um he went and met with mataji music and his brother-in

Lahore at his brother's house in Lahore and and he was like you know he was like he wants to study he's determined he wants to come here and um like he gave his admission like he was like okay um this is the person talk to this person um and he can come but he has to like catch up and he has to be able to pass the exams um to be able to continue because it was the mid-year kind of thing so I was like okay so I came I prayed I performed Omar for the first time and went straight to Tesla and um within a day I was subhanallah the food and I was in the hospital that's how bad it was for me

um it was very very difficult but um the environment was a beautiful environment there were students from around the world international students I think we had a close to at least um 20 or 30 student countries students from those countries so from Italy from Thailand and this is like originally Thai like they only speak Thai um Malaysia you know Africa we had some Arab students so we had like a really good mix of students and that was you know really interesting for me because I got to interact and intermingle with all this like you know Global community of Muslims so that was really what made the time worth it in Festival wow okay and

being there for many years you've kind of uh followed this journey back to the US um right you you've pursued a secular studies in the U.S haven't you then since you can come back and so now that often seen by many people as uh wow okay this is quite um not the Paradigm I'm used to in a madrasa a whole different way of learning sometimes it comes across very challenging um what what have your thoughts been on that and any any challenges that sprung at you if if that be the case

yeah um yeah you're right just to address the point um a lot of times you know traditional um they're not really um see the academic path as a good career or a good choice in general for Education because they you know that they say I must pass from Southern to Southern um and you know it has to be um it has to be acquired in an environment with you and stuff so um yeah that was interesting but I I had some goals that I wanted to achieve and that was mainly you know being able to serve my community I'm here I'm in the States now I need to be able to understand issues and things going on

with our youth and whatnot so that led me to pursue this masters of divinity with focus in Islamic chaplaincy and um yeah there were a lot of issues I mean the biggest issue for me is I jumped from high school level papers and um study in the and and the West to graduate level so there was all this in between because I didn't do my undergraduate here so that was very very difficult for me all right I mean what um what is it that because what a lot of people when they do something like that they jump from uh religious kind of Seminary madrasa type of

paradigms to a university Paradigm uh you see myself when I came back one of the things I did was a psychology degree and it really I think it complemented my my kind of my way of thinking my mind it was that it was as if my mind was fertile territory for this degree it was just I mean I always had a kind of passion for trying to understand people's uh Minds Behavior brains that kind of thing was always fascinating to me so

um but putting that aside it's also the the angle of analysis evaluation being being forced to view things from different perspectives that you don't necessarily uh see within a madrasa paradigm that these things to me were like well okay they definitely bolstered and boosted my development and growth in on this journey of uh self-development yeah what I don't know if that's things like that happen yeah much you came across much of that in in a chaplain yeah

because it is dealing with faith and it's maybe but maybe they're coming at it from a different angle so sure yeah um yes I think that really resonates with me um um maybe not the same in us I'm like you in the sense that you know you did psychology and you were going a little bit um outside of the Islamic and outside of the faith-based study but a lot of our studies like we had to do for example counseling and we had to do other things where you know not all the time it was not um not 100 of time was face-based so like sometimes because like in hospitals like when I was doing my CPE um hospitals actually have

non-face-weight chaplains now they have like an atheist chaplain oh that actually serves patience yeah talk to us about what is a an atheist chaplain yeah so they will like um you know um they don't identify with any particular religion and maybe they don't they would not even bring up God in general in the conversation so for example a regular chaplain in the hospital setting you're usually interacting with a patient who's going through something yeah so either a family member passed away or they're there for a surgery or something happened to them some kind of Crisis so a lot of times you know you want to connect with them and usually why they have faith-based shop lenses because you

know you say okay I identify with certain certain fate so they say okay this person can help you what are the coping mechanisms what what does Islam say about yeah but what what would a an atheist uh chaplain it's just generally there to kind of boost morale kind of thing is that correct like kind of um focus on like emotional intelligence and emotions and feelings without bringing religion or God into the picture or even the spiritual or the afterlife or anything yeah none of that they will they would completely ignore them still yeah that's that's a a a that's a weird one because how would it because I could

understand you see so okay I so he I can understand imagine somebody didn't mention God per se let's just say for they they don't want to mention God but they want to speak in a sense like somebody's passed away and they want to say things like look they're in a better place and you know they're they're at peace and so in a way without mentioning God they're still mentioning this spiritual or the magisteria the realm of religion they're speaking of an afterlife and place and look don't worry

but what would an atheist uh would he just because how would they uh navigate those Waters would they just say yeah uh they don't it's just like counseling basically and motivation correct correct it's really it's really like that um one thing they teach you in chaplain see is you know people they carry baggage and they carry all these emotions and issues don't get into any of that like just address the issue at hand right now and that is like living in the moment so for example you're going through a surgery and you're you're depressed so just address that issue and whatever basically oh no sorry

it's okay no good good I was gonna say let's say a person's passed away or passing away how how would they out of curiosity what would they say what or something what would they do in that situation obviously there's nothing you can do but I mean to console is it just the like I'm curious about the passing yeah well you know honestly I didn't really um I didn't really Shadow The Atheist chapter at our hospital so I kind of I actually was very blessed I'm the hospital guy did the chaplains he had had a lean Muslim chaplain um so and he's my close friend too so I

was able to work with him so I kind of avoided that side because usually when you're doing CPE which is clinical pastoral education it's part of the imdiv degree you cannot get your in-depth without doing one unit the comment here maybe reflecting on the good they did in their life yeah possibly okay that could make sense maybe they're just saying yeah okay let's not dwell on the death commemorate their lives instead what they yeah that kind of stuff right like focus on the good like you know your good times like maybe they will bring up a conversation that you know is there anything that really makes you happy thinking reflecting on that you got to spend time with this person any any fond memories

stuff like that I I think wow it is I I always do find that I find this you know especially the more I in recent years reflect upon these things these topics I find these atheistic claims really just so um arbitrary um because ultimately you see it's it's it's all very similar like even if you take like let's say you take something like this as an example let's say you say right

um look let's and that's a very nice and it's a beautiful thing to say that look let's commemorate a person's life and not focus on the death and uh as in let's let's look at the positive and the memories and um and you know celebrate the life the full the full life that this individual has lived and I think that's an amazing beautiful way to look at things but in all honesty even that is just so arbitrary because it's like because it's a value isn't it you see because the moment we say that look uh let's celebrate something

and it's it's this person's story uh that is a human value that we've Associated but in the face of in the backdrop of meaninglessness it is nothing like that nothing stands like it doesn't you see because if everything is ultimately just random cohesion thereby so is this like it doesn't like I find there's so much so much scotoma

you know like blind spots in this Theory to dismiss faith that people don't realize that even that is a faith like to say it is a faith of sorts that to say well look um like be true to yourself you know lift like these are values and values are ultimately just articles of Faith they're just because they're in and of themselves you see they're axiomatic but it's like girdles kind of theorem in completeness theorem you can't prove them in and of themselves like you know live life to the fullest it's not or you know go out there all these things unless you're going to just justify them

by utilitarianism which most people are not doing uh they're actually seeing a value Beyond utility in them they're seeing a meaningful value like it's an enriching gives meaning to life that kind of value it's all just an article of faith yeah yeah I mean that's a random I went off there on one but I know yeah no I think that's that's important that's an important aspect to highlight because I think you know before people and and before there was even an atheist chaplain in general you know they kind of slowly slowly moved away from religion and before that and before atheism there was really this couple

years where people were calling to like reform let's not follow one religion but let's take the good parts of all religion kind of join them together so a lot of times you know um even for example Muslims or Christians or Jews and a hospital setting and they they tell us to be you know a uh Interfaith chaplain or a just a general religion chaplain like an ecumenical kind of yeah yeah yeah kind of see you know the beauty like for example there were times that I had to go see Christian patients like like um and um almost uh a Christian chaplain will have to go see Muslim patients so you know have certain um abilities and you we had like certain things like for example we had like some

some water and we had um like Global books and bookmarks with ayat and the Christian chaplains if there was part of the unit um and for example the Muslim chaplain wasn't available they would like you know just take these things and say you know Quran say you know if there's anything else like you know the Muslim chaplain isn't available so yeah I think that's interesting yeah and I and I didn't mean it in that way I I just meant that sometimes I see people because there is a part of atheism that is simply rebelling against a um institutionalized religion like it feels that you know with institutionalization

comes power and all these things and power corrupts and people are corrupted and and they're not wrong on that matter that that is true with power comes corruption and and you know structuralism and institutionalization and what they call organized religions and so there is that side and that's understandable from you know a perspective but there then there's a side where people are obstinate to deny God and there's almost like a declaration of war on the concept of God because they feel that there's nothing to prove this and you know ah this is an absurdity and and and and that's what I meant building building on

that that we have that yet there that almost their entire um you know whole project and everything the the inter the Enterprise of their lives rests on the back of Articles of Faith but just have a different nature and so yeah but that's that's interesting so in your worlds you were doing your your Masters sure uh what was your did you have to submit a thesis in that or how did that and what was that about yeah so the mdiv doesn't have a thesis um so that it may has a thesis so ma is usually in the U.S two years so more or

less but two-year program the mdiv is a three-year program so um you have extra components to it and actually um when you when you go to like schools for example I'm applying for my PhD now they actually look at the mdep as more than just a MMA based on that extra year of work and there's other components for example at CPE which is the clinical pastoral education that you have to get as well as you have to do a um um what do they call it when you basically work with an organization so I decided for my field placement yes it's called a field placement um I decided to work with a Christian organization

um it was a um a similar um a a ministry under the Assemblies of God called um Serene Ministry and basically what that what Serene was doing was trying to bridge that gap between Muslims and Christians especially the Somali Community because of Minnesota um we have we're like 65 Somali um I think there's like 200 something thousand Muslims in Minnesota and 65 something like that as somalis so um they work specifically you know projects um feeding um you know when they were like kind of um situations in Somalia some Christian pastors actually from our community went to um Africa Somali and packed meals and

you know worked on that so the whole concept was like Building Bridges so um they actually wanted me and my classmate um Dr tamim said who's also a he's an Imam he's actually one of the founders or a Masjid but he did the mdep as well he used the um pharmacist um they wanted us to basically be able to go to the Christian communities and conservatives you know these are you know really um you know evangelicals are very hard to work with and you know talk to them and talk to them about Islam and not trying to convert anything but just have like you know open discussions and try to build a bridge so um I got to do that for about six months so they have these extra aspects said more rigorous than a regular in my

wow okay sure that's uh yeah yeah yeah because here there is usually I'm not quite sure in the in in the um um you know a masters in Divinity do do we I'm not sure whether we have it still like that in the UK um I know that we have like M fields and um but I'm not sure about M divs but it does sound yeah it sounds it has this thing to it huh the green Divinity yeah and it sounds like you're almost you know it almost sounds quite shirky it sounds like you know I've got a master

in Divinity yeah usually whenever I tell someone that they're like wait what does divinity mean like any Muslim like wait wait what do you mean I'm like no no it means religion like calm down it doesn't mean anything um and then there's another aspect there's a um Capstone um which is basically like a portfolio of all your papers some of the best papers so it's like built of like 20 papers um and some can be longer some can be shorter and then they have a board in front of you a panel of professors from the University and basically you have a three hour exam as a verbal exam when they just pick up random papers for example so

um on My Capstone I had a paper on um yeah it was um so I did a paper all right this is going to be interesting go on let's let's have it let's have that what's uh what is it yeah you know so in my paper I tried to avoid the oh Master oh master of divinity talk to us you know um so I took an animal Kalam class and um it was done by one of our teachers um he is a student so he um so he's Marshall a very good motekelan I would say mashallah very

eloquent so he had a um a class on Kalem and I was like why not choose the most controversial of all the concepts and that's everyone has something to say about it in life yeah so I wrote a paper oh wow I wrote a paper um yeah it was a midterm paper so basically my research was like this whole thing is basically my opinion stupid I think you know um the both sides are trying to talk about different aspects of Kalam Allah they're just like going over each other right the hanafies and then that's what did these and you know they're trying to say that Allah cannot be letters it cannot be

um voices it cannot be similar to The Creation right because Lisa can Italy and at the other side you know um the you know the athletes and you know Imam Ahmad alhamdul and those who came after them they were trying to get at the fact that they don't want to belittle Allah by saying it's only a creation right because that's what the matazilla went on to say it's a uh it's a Hulk it's a creation of Allah so it's so I'm in this discussion during this whole thing I brought in the Christian perspective because you know Christians they believe in Jesus becoming and the word becoming um the god becoming the word a word becoming God whatever so I brought this in um I was like you know and this is an

aspect that we we can talk about because I was like in my class there's non-muslims as well so maybe this would be beneficial to bring this discussion and I kind of talked about like how Christians look at this in the different schools in Christianity the logos yeah the Gospel of John you know the word I wonder if you brought did did you bring into into discussion the chaisa Jesus being kalimatullah correct okay okay yes tell us a bit Yeah so I I talked a little bit about that I was like um from an Islamic perspective you know the Quran just say that Allah

um calls him um the law right but at the same time we don't see it as a anthropomorphic um you know um title or a thief of Allah he is meaning he is the you know unique word of Allah um as some of the the mean they will say that Allah says that word um but it doesn't mean that he has any kind of part of divinity in him or he's not um you know Divine in himself so one of the Christian professors on the on the panel he was like Bismillah he was like uh you you brought this up in your paper so let's have a debate right now okay pretend that you're you're you're

you're able to kill them you're you know a Kalam scholar and I'm a Christian whatever scholar and let's debate this out so it is during the panel we just started going back and forth on my paper and you know all these aspects that I mentioned I mentioned the the Matthew need the aspect you know of Kalam Allah and I talked a little bit about how you know some of the um activities they say that you know every time the Kalam of Allah is mentioned for example when Musa heard you know the Kalam of Allah um some say that was a creation that was a Allah created that Kalam so that he could hear in a certain way so and I brought all these different aspects in the paper and um he just kept going to

the fact that you know oh but the the gospel says that um it says this and I was like you know then we have to go back to the we have to go to the discussion that is the gospel actually the indeed because you know they say he built on the fact that the Quran talks about the injeel and you know the and the gospel equals the Angel and the injil says you know this about it and I was like um but you know we Muslim dollars don't actually agree on the fact that the engine is actually you know the four gospels Mark Matthew Luke and John I was like there's many an agile I mean you have you know in jeans and the gospels that you know are still around today such as the Gospel of Thomas

um The Gospel of Mary Magdalene um you have um the gospel of Peter you have the gospel of James the alleged brother of Jesus which is only a small portion of the book of the of the Gospel that we have today so I was uh I was like you can't really um force me to believe in you know first of all the Gospel of John saying that is the injeel if we don't even agree on the fact so I kind of threw it off in that sense um that way you know this whole thing of the uh Kalam Allah just last week somebody sent me uh you know one of our groups uh WhatsApp groups and

somebody put a video on there and this video it's like some Tick Tock and and it was essentially just two uh people arguing debating it was an Islamic debate but it was about this Kalam Allah so one was clearly salafi and the other one seemed as if he was like an al-azhari kind of check I didn't recognize any of them uh but they were just kind of shouting over each other and saying this and and one guy saying well you know obviously the selfie position is look is how can you say that and they were

arguing this very point I guess about Arabic and this whole thing that how can you say that Allah is saying you know what do we call Quran then if Allah doesn't have Kalam and he doesn't have um Arabic and the other person was saying yes but Allah's Kalam is not with sound and not with uh this is how we receive it and and this person saying but but why is it called Kalam Allah then and and he said and they're like oh you're stupid then and you're stupid

this is interesting it was just a little Tick Tock video but yeah yeah I thought whoa okay well obviously it's not helping either side because they're just shouting and um you know it's being derogatory towards one another but this is often a very um you know a very uh confusing topic for many people and I guess um yeah like part of it is going to be well um you see maybe because people don't jet naturally people don't really speak much about it Scholars don't really speak

much about these things so um it is going to get confusing and now what's fascinating is how uh especially many sunnis the being the Asha Iran I mean I guess all I do expand Arizona to include all even by extension let's say even if we however we want to see them but even the salafia are going to be like really this represents Sunni Islam altogether but um just speaking broadly you've got the Iran

now they would generally see that yes the Quran is yes it is but that is its manifestation in this world they see that as almost like you see Allah's Kalam is almost like a frequency uh or you know almost to approximate it in an example that it's it's almost like a wavelength a frequency and as it's picked up in this world it appears in this language uh because the language

itself is created you know Arabic it was only I mean it's you know prior to the prophet sallallahu and the way the way the prophet spoke Arabic and people spoke Arabic that kind of Arabic would not have exceeded one to two centuries prior to the prophet it would it would have just come into emergence at that time and then a primordial Arabic which should have been slightly different would have spanned probably another anything maybe going up to about four to six hundred years prior to that so but it's not you know like if you went back five thousand years nobody on Earth spoke Arabic Arabic didn't exist there was no such thing just as nobody spoke

English you know nobody spoke Urdu nobody spoke these languages have of emerged along the way from other languages so the argument well and these people are making is that well obviously it's taking that this whole sensible approach of saying a very uh of the world approach and wait a minute these things are created and they weren't around forever you know it wasn't so a last speech manifesting in this language um it's manifesting to uh pick in that

way in this Dunya but Allah's actual speech so you have the kalaman nafsi and kalamun love thee um as a distinction but this is something which is not so well known to people so it does come as a surprise yeah and the the conversation gets deeper actually um sorry to cut you off but it gets deeper especially where you know some of our salafi Brethren and I love talafia and I love everyone so alhamdulillah I'm very inclusive I mentioned we have everyone and especially in the US I think it's important because sectarianism is such a I think in my

opinion such a bad thing but in general um you know they go deeper because then you know the salafi would have to affirm that um Arabic is eternal right so it's um it's um it's kadim and then as well as they say um they will bring certain a Hadith for example um um love Arabic at least tell us I think I think and then so they say like something like that so it gets very deep and they say that oh everyone's gonna go to jail and somehow they're all going to speak Arabic as well yeah you're right and and that becomes um that was actually in that argument as

well the person was bringing that about that oh well Arabic is is eternal and and then there's an assumption that God speaks in Arabic yeah that Allah speaks in Arabic as in that's the language of Allah but that's that's not actually the belief of uh most Muslims throughout history because it's not Allah knows all languages obviously it's not you know but Allah it's not a human being in the sense that speaking like how is because languages are not languages are

constructs of the human world um Allah is transcendent and above and the islands you know above like uh human constructs the language is a mode of human communication correct um you know to a let alone Allah I mean not speaking about Allah if there be a uh a superhuman being let's say there were aliens that were superhuman as in by superhuman I mean above human uh in

the let's say they to us was as we are to pets yeah a bit like let's say in the future AI which we're probably not so far away from if I'm if it gains some mode of I don't know Consciousness or maybe low level Consciousness um now you see the way AI you like okay let's take AI as an example the way AI communicates between itself it's not through language how we are communicating our way of communicating because it can communicate rapidly and holistically

within you know milliseconds and uh it's way too powerful compared like we are so slow behind it our mode of communication is is so slow and in fact communication human communication uh they say anything like up to almost 80 percent of our communication is actually non-verbal it's not what we say it's it's often how we say it that conveys what we're saying the intonations the the body language how we are expressing it the micro Expressions facial expressions they change the meaning of everything you

know from uh you know sit down to sit down to you know like ever it instantly changes what we're saying that the whole so to a being or an entity that is communicates much more effectively than humans our speech is is so out of date to it like we like we actually to to an entity that would communicate so uh you know um unfathomably fast and holistically to them human communication would be

pathetic because we often miscommunicate we often misunderstand words we misunderstand context this is why texting is a nightmare because when you text people they can't understand if you're joking or you're being and in fact you know human beings are the only creatures to have speech and we're the only creatures to have misunderstandings it's true isn't it so yeah to an entity above our capacity in communication a super communicative entity human language and speech is is

it's sure it's it's like a pathetic uh okay at best medium like like this like think about it it would take me so long to express things to you or you to me as an as a person because of just how limited we are with words and how long it takes us to like computers communicate so rapidly I mean that it would leave us uh you know light years behind so to assume Allah communicates in human in a way that is of a human construct it is

um I mean it's unknowingly belittling Allah it's kind of uh it's it's it's it's kind of it's it's it's kind of disparaging in a way to Allah because Allah is you know he's so transcendent and above and um so to say well Allah would communicate how we as human beings communicate with all our uh even if you had to say well he does it in a more perfect way but still to use our human construct it's the equivalent of saying well

because we drive vehicles it's like saying well the only way we can understand an entity getting from A to B is by rapidly is by means of a vehicle even within the world natural world beings entities are not if we're going to take entity you could take a photon traveling at the speed of light it doesn't travel how we travel so just because we see the world through our way so to to superimpose that onto and then on to God it's such a it's a human fallacy All Too Human yeah and that's I think that's what the

discussion is using when you see the the actualismatology is having discussion with the salafia that they would use these things and the salafi's responses but you're using animal you're going too deep into it right you you don't need to you don't need to think about all these things Allah chose it for himself he does according to him quote unquote he identified himself like that so you have to accept it and then they will they will try to project that on the salad right they will say oh this is the understanding of the salaf where in reality when you look at it um you don't really see that understanding the seller right he's very explicit I mean you can we can debate if this is actually the book of

hanifer or not oh sorry but the attribution I think some parts so I think according to the hanafies we would say it is I think that's what Sheikh etherbacks stands on this is as well one of my teachers which you know very well that some of the parts of some of the parts is attributed to him and then some additions happen later on but um it says explicitly in secular that um the regarding Allah of the Quran that um

creation because we're we're speaking where so we're creating those words we're writing something that was not existent we brought it into existence with ink but well like in the Kalam of Allah which is the actual Kalam um is um it's it's not it's yeah but you see the problem with that uh thing is that you see the Selfies wouldn't in essence I mean some humblees did but I think many of them wouldn't disagree with our printing of the Quran to be created like they wouldn't think that this must have is an uncreated like I think they most of them would

recognize so that sentence they wouldn't that sentence would be neither here neither there because I don't think anybody here because they they could claim that and we could claim that because they would just say well yeah everybody agrees that the printing press is is created um I think the issue uh really appears with where people say you see because even when they say Kalam Allah the issue appears when they will start speaking about the Arabic now that gets then it starts to oh you can delineate and start to oh right there's a separation here now like what's actually going on

because because they you see yeah and the maturity as well I mean by extension um they will really I mean there isn't much there because they will say it is creative but they will just shy away from using the word they will say instead because because a blacklisted word so they will kind of go with well okay it's let's just use the word Madness and you know yeah move on yeah these are those kind of yeah

because the issue then comes like why did Allah say why did he attribute to himself where the you know these nationalities will say just like Allah says right um you know um just the same way Allah I mean it's not because bait is actually the bait of Allah you know he his matter and he exists within you know this Dunya but it's the purposes so they will say you know the kitab the the book that we have is because it's attributed to Allah that's why we we um you know we exalted but it doesn't mean that's a kid as a child um and by child I mean like about five

years old or something I was actually confused with that issue you know because I um because I remember as a kid we had um you know we had a few but we had this one big picture of the Kappa on the wall and and it was the old do you remember the uh you're young but do you remember the old photos of the Kaaba when it wasn't the modern building it was the old one it had the old kind of Pulpit out there and it had the old and it was never as busy so it's the old photos it'll be on Google so we had one of those because this is going way back like early 80s so

as a kid I remember being told that that's Allah's house so I didn't understand it and I thought ah okay and and I remember you know being told that that's the house of God and so I was like thinking ah okay so what God lives there and because you know because you know so I guess in many ways my uh theological and philosophical Pursuits began at that age where I was trying to figure out what is going on and I was thinking what is I was thinking a lot of strange like

that's what it looks strange for a house yeah like it just looks like like it's just like like a cube I was thinking like what is that a house like is yeah like I didn't get it and uh obviously you see as as in the mashallah the the really uh the kind of amazing environment in which we grew up if you asked a question you got to slap anyway so so I think I just personally just grappled I think there comes point where you start to understand metaphor and you start to understand oh it doesn't mean it's the house of God it

just means that there's uh um you know it's it's just a holy place so we call it yeah it's very interesting I had the extreme opposite I think I think growing up because I came from Christianity so Christianity no one says you know church is the house of God um but like when I when we became Muslim um the first thing that my father taught us is that you know you can't scream in the Masjid because it's the house of God so I I automatically um you know connected it to be a metaphor like every okay every single house is the house of God so my assumption the first time I went to the Kaaba and just in general before I started studying Islam was oh this is

just like you know this is a metaphor it doesn't actually mean God is in the house or these are the houses of God but it's just for like you know me I guess being that 10 year old kid just means like you know no but ten you can understand metaphor yeah 10 year old children can five is a bit tricky still I think they kind of because yeah just today I was speaking to uh Zara I mean she you know she's now turned eight but we were speaking about metaphor and they can't she can't grasp me I was asking her to explain it was interesting because I was asking her I was giving her some examples like Like

You Are My Sunshine and I said well what does this mean and she could understand it but she was saying but I said but why are we using the word Sunshine then is it the actual sunshine and she was struggling she was saying I understand it but I don't know like she's struggling to explain it but that's at this age and I think um yeah five's a bit bit young I guess yeah so wow so these were your kind of theological uh Explorations yeah and speaking of papers you you also a topic that uh is very

much at heart in your in the sacred blessed United States of America and that is one that right now it's uh heart in the press as well and that is abortion you're not going from speaking of five-year-old children going to minus five and then minus the child [Laughter] yeah so yeah this was something you you also looked into this this is such a Hot Topic in the U.S I saw something uh by Biden saying that look uh I want Americans to know if they try to pass a

national ban on abortion I will veto it and you know something just just I think just yesterday or the day before I was reading it and yeah you see this is just that you can never imagine another developed country Advanced country in the world where abortion is such a political issue like I can understand it being an issue amongst the public but a political issue an issue of office like it's a it's a make or break deal with certain presidents so yeah uh yeah right talk to us man what's this yes

you know you know I I like I told you um I just came back from DC and actually Biden in his um in his address for the national paragraph because he actually brought up abortion as well just before we just go on there when you say DC people you came back from the White House itself that's correct see speaking from we've gone from the the the uh you know beta law which is the Black Cube and now in a shirky parallel we've gone to

the White House so you were invited to the White House let me humble myself a bit more actually it was an interesting experience to be honest um you know I didn't know what to expect going into it um we had I think they invited at least I think they were saying like you know ambassadors or some kind of you know um

no if that's the case I'll just go back I'm just like this will I need to go leave but um it was interesting because you know um this is actually something the National Prayer Breakfast um is something that has been going on for 71 this was the 71st year that they um they hosted it and basically from the time of President Eisenhower they've always had this National Prayer Breakfast some people uh are curious that I'm curious that how it is yeah what is this invite to the White House about yeah oh yeah yeah yeah are you on speed dial with President Biden what what is this ceremony in the hotel give us a little

imams get invited and different Faith people is that one yeah yeah yeah so if I if I had that connection I don't think I can tell you unfortunately but um um it's interesting because um it started so the history behind it which I did not know I learned about it when I went there is um during um President Eisenhower's time um he kind of felt that the White House was the most loneliest place in the world he said there's no lonelier place than the White House and you know he had his whole reason so he found out that the House of Representatives in the Senate they were meeting separately on a weekly basis to pray for the country and pray for the president so he found out

about this and he said you know is there any way that I can be invited as well like I knew some time out so they were like Bismillah um so so they invited him and since then actually it's been a continuous um it's a it's continuous and actually everyone who received invitations they have some kind of connection to the original representatives and the Senate who started it for the last 70 years so for example you can't just get an invitation so you know someone who knows someone who knows someone who is either in the senate or the rep who you know connected with someone so has been passed down like that so they were like

you know you're sitting here because you knew someone who was part of the whole um the original are you just reminding us how connected you are sure [Laughter] are you saying just to let you know not anybody can get this you know you need to know someone who knows someone right back to president Eisen Eisenhower now you know someone as well so now Allah so so they invite people from different faiths and you get together for a breakfast is that one yeah so it's it's more it's more than a breakfast so they actually it's actually a two-day event

so it's a dinner a breakfast lunch and then dinner again so it's like um it's four meals and basically um it started as a Christian thing so it's a really Christian thing so like even in the invitation it says um please come together join us um so we can pray in the name of Jesus so it's very Christian but in the in the recent times you know they've become more inclusive you know due to political change and whatnot and this year specifically they invited one of the Keynotes because King Abdullah II from Jordan and his wife Queen ranio so they were both speakers so um king um King Abdullah he spoke at the dinner

no no sorry he spoke at the breakfast and then Queen Rania spoke at the luncheon and basically the idea was you know for them to talk about Interfaith and whatnot and the whole idea is just for us to connect as you know people at a deeper level and you know put out and they they keep and they kept emphasizing the part of like bipartisan so forget about your political alliances forget about your religious affiliations forget about all of that let's just connect at a at the level of humanity and let's just come together to pray for one another one um right okay and and any other interesting uh you bump into uh any interesting

people Chef what's the give us the lowdown behind the scenes epics what's going on yeah you know um there are some interesting people um some um we I met the um our foreign minister of Pakistan um yeah they actually um did a tribute to his mom so um they had a video um yeah so they had a um so she was apparently invited uh many times so she's come and she's participated in the National Prayer Breakfast um so um they invited him to speak yeah

I mean she was I I think the way she carved out her identity as a woman this kind of female prime minister but not just a female prime minister the way she uh set out this identity you know with that but uh the whole style because she kind of carved it out for herself and I think every woman that has aspired in Pakistani politics after her has only tried to copy her and she was she was like a formidable Force Benazir puto so yeah yeah okay awesome yeah wow yeah and there's some other people um some other you know ambassadors from other

countries and the interesting that the way they set it up is so once you so basically you go through a process of vetting so they ask you for your information your background and then you get it registered and then during the registration process they give you so there's like thousands of people so I think at full capacity this is the first time after Colvin like a thousand guests almost at least no no before covert it was about four thousand oh wow that's way too many yeah yeah so um it's packed and basically the idea is that you're you're basically um they have random seating so basically you're sitting with sometimes you know uh delegation from

um the um you know Ambassador so-and-so or from the Consulate of so-and-so country so like I had like interactions with you know um a guy from Norway um from um Kenya um from like Korea South Korea so like all mixed so like basically each time each dinner each meal you're sitting with a different group so you guys can exchange information and talk and get to know each other oh wow that's okay here's me I I was under the impression there's like about 50 people at this event but wow oh no no yeah it's a pretty big event it's pretty it's pretty big and um this was the first time that they actually decreased the number

because of kovid so I think we I think they said um it was less than 1400 people this time but usually it's more one for each year of Islam [Laughter] Allah Allah so what about the American shoe was uh yeah uh who are the other classic are well I guess if it's recent I don't think he would have been I bumped into him in Pakistan actually just recently yeah yeah yeah okay so yeah so others

was there um no he was not speaking I think um I I saw him um before so the the day before the conference and the National Prayer Breakfast they had a peace Summit in DC where um they he came with his teacher yeah so he was there with him and they um they gathered Iman from all across the states for um for that peace conference so unfortunately the dates did um like it was first the peace conference was first and then the prayer breakfast was after so a lot of imams actually left and went back home so they stayed there for like the three days at the conference and then they went home

so they didn't stay but a couple of them stayed like oh his thing was after it was awesome his thing was before oh it was before the years before yeah yeah okay so I think a lot of the imams who I saw um they were just like leaving when I I was coming in for to start the piece on the con and the National Prayer Breakfast any interesting convos with uh Hamza Yusuf anything give us some behind the scenes behind the scene gems and Nuggets throw them this way yes this was my first time interacting with your comes up so you know he was kind of just sitting in the um lobby of the hotel and I walk in and

I said um and with me was my friend um Dr tanim said and we both went up to him and he was like and he was like where are you from like Minnesota and he's like oh I have relatives in Minnesota so we were like okay Chef so why don't you ever come so just come to Minnesota and he was like and then he he was like you know what are you guys doing in Minnesota he was like I don't know what's going on with um your politics and then he brought up ilhan Omar who was from Minnesota and said that what's going on you know subhanallah you know we have to speak up as you know imams and shiuk you know and you know let the community know that these people don't represent us because some of the issues

that she's got involved in recently more liberal opinions when it comes to like lgbtq and these kind of things I do find though the American politics and the Messiah to be some of them very kind of strange like they they do take what appears I don't know like it appears because they a lot of the I don't know about it a lot but some of them appear to be very very kind of pro-republican in that sense very kind of right wing leaning [Music] um and it's strange because you you I don't know like uh hmm I mean I get it it

doesn't mean people need to be ultra vocal this kind of that that leaning but you would assume a bit you know maybe it was the middle yeah I think it's interesting you know I've had some discussion with some of the shio I think this is something as you know um imams and the community is looking to us for guidance because you know on both sides you know you have issues um on the right wing side you have issues that you know they hate Muslims they're very open with that you know Trump Muslim band whatnot even though like there's not really anything that took place anyway like you have these people who are up front to your face that we don't like you and then you have the left wing that uh you know Bismillah

please come hug you you know um and everything but at the same time you know you have the destruction of families and you know how um the lgbtq agenda is not really compatible with Islam I mean it's an attack on the family system and whatnot so you have these two things and I think as Muslims we have to really um as Leaders we have to struggle and look at where the man found where the manifested and you know kind of balance it out with them because of the Sharia but yeah I know um the use of this very vocal about his opinions when it comes to you know politics and a lot of the statement of professors yeah I mean yeah because you see

because there is a you see with the whole like you see there with with kind of wokism there is or this militant left there is a disintegration of things like uh family and stuff like that but if it's I mean I think there's different camps if I can use that or groups of like they will be people who let's say they are uh they're not Muslim they will be lgbtq or they will be uh or whatever even if

they're not that they but they're not necessarily it doesn't make them anti-family or Auntie like they would just want like they would say well this is our country you know we're just as much citizens we deserve these rights as well why shouldn't we have a right to um and and there will be people obviously that will try to impose like we had in the UK this thing of uh where they were trying to push uh sexual education onto like even five-year-olds and that's just seen as like well you know why like there's no need for that kind of stuff and uh and it's just seen

as and they were actually uh uh tweet by some of the so one of the guys that was behind the educational um whole project had a few years ago been tweeting saying things like let's smash uh heteronormative normative sexuality and things like this like smashing pieces and so it made these kind of statements which obviously is clearly got an agenda uh against just regular or you know hetero uh people and and that kind of heteronormative sexuality but there would be people as

well that won't have issues with let's say heteronormative Lifestyles or people regular families and in fact many of them would have families of their own uh you know they may be lgbtq they um and they don't even need to be Muslim like there will be people who are non-muslim so and also this so how is this you see because if we're lumping everything together I think that is an issue as well like people have to there's the idea that is very anti uh it's just so militant left that it's just

anti-uh normative anti- kind of family Auntie this that it's just like anarchical uh that is clearly uh I would say that goes against the general values of the faith um and some people may subscribe to it some people may not subscribe to it just because they um so I think it becomes a and in America I know these things are so divisive and so um I remember Suleiman got a lot of slack for uh he went to um he went to some what was it like a March or something or he was doing something was he doing a March remember

he was is that the one in Texas where he did the anointing yeah yeah yeah yeah that's it and there was some the Border it was like the Mexican border yeah and there was some kind of uh I think it was the greatest thing was about I I think was it about people because it was at the border so I think it was yeah had a um a kind of social issue at hand yes yes suffering I think migrants and things like this yeah it was about immigration immigration but within it there was also a coalition with uh the LGBT community and things like this who were part of the of the March wasn't it because yeah he got a lot of slack I

think uh uh Daniel hakik because he was really going at him and yeah and I think America becomes so harshly divided on these things it's like wow yeah it's it's tough you know um a couple times when I'm um invited to speak at Interfaith Gatherings and stuff like just because of this whole how how sensitive the issue is in the US I have to be very careful like I was at this um um like even like at vigils or anything where they give like candles or something like that like it's just because like someone will take a picture and make it blow it up into this huge issue and I mean like I I can't blame um

because he's one of the you know celebrity imams you know he spoke up on a lot of these issues and I don't think you know a lot of times like as imams we're not informed of what's going on who's gonna be there um we're just asked to um take part like I was asked and I don't think to be honest this is okay speculation on my part I don't think he would have minded as much if it wasn't just for the panopticon effect if it wasn't for the effect of people just taking pictures blowing it up I don't think the participation per se would have bothered him and and one thing I do really uh admire about

it's just he's just always smiling you know and he'll just always smile in the and doesn't really take the bait and doesn't get involved in these things and so that is a an admirable uh quality you know yeah it doesn't go unnoticed so wow but this is yeah America man they get so very passionate this is this is where you are to be a chaplain Chef so you're you're gonna have to navigate through these waters subhanallah you know what it's tough you know um because it's a riffle effect right so now you feel it at all these different levels and you

know I did some University chaplaincy as well and a couple times you know whenever it comes to like University Chaplin discussions um the first thing you know they they ask uh is uh one of my friends was applying for a chaplaincy job so they asked him um he's a Muslim chaplain so they asked him you know what is the job of a chaplain so in University context so he says you know helping students navigate through you know their um their identity um you know religious identity and you know helping them form a faith away from their family and pressure of society and whatnot like you know when they're in University by themselves so the the interviewer was like yeah yeah that's

right and then she asked him have you ever helped anyone navigate their romantic sexual um desires as well he's like have you have you read my Diaries it's a tough question like you know like so um he ended up not getting the job if that wasn't that wasn't um clear but um it's tough because you know they they want someone a lot of these universities and positions they want um chaplains who explicitly you know agree and you know identify and like not identify but at least you know incur courage and you know they create a space for them and I

remember when I first talked to Imam suhaibweb um this was when I was when I was starting my journey becoming a chaplain this is the first thing he told me is he still a chaplain he was a chaplain a few years ago yeah no he's no longer with NYU he's um he actually moved to DC now he's involved he's a residence scholar for organization there in DC oh wow but for some time he was involved at the NYU Islamic Center with Imam called the thief and um and I I met him and I asked him and he was like I told him you know if I want to get into chaplain see you know I want to be at a university like you are and he was like um don't be naive you know there's a lot of issues with it as well

he was like how are you going to navigate um these certain he kind of laid them out and I was like you know that's food for thought I haven't thought about it yet it's a tricky one really because we discussed it on the podcast the recently as well this whole thing of relationships and how do in in this day and age as well and how to you know it's a it's an issue of the firk isn't really uh uh it isn't in sync with the problems that people are facing and then nobody because of the panopticon effect that

you mentioned everybody's watching each other and people are worried of being thrown under the bus and so people are afraid to even even address an issue because they even to highlight that well there's a problem because then the spotlight gets put on them and they don't want to they just don't want drama and they don't want to be which is understandable but still um these are problems you know that yeah like because how does how does any of this work in this society which is

hypersexualized and where marriage is for the most part it is really quite uh aggrandized to the effect that it becomes a burden um and you know we are in those times where you know it says we're just ins you have some of these ahadith that say that all you know people may question some of the authenticity but that of a time where uh marriage will be so difficult but just uh just casually sleeping around would be so easy and and that's because of the

you see because marriage is like these things are fundamentally social constructs like we have as human beings and then we've loaded them so much more with time that it's it's a burden so uh so how do people navigate through that what are they supposed to do and I know the salafi or one you know it doesn't have to be just salafi but one response may be well just fast and that that doesn't quite cut it for many people yeah yeah I think it's the easy way out you

know a lot of times as um you know what I've seen from the imams you know um when you just quote a Hadith or an Ayah or something like that it's an easy way out of the conversation it's a good way to kind of take the responsibility off the burden of the shoulder shift yeah and just you know say you know the answer is already there where you know it will be I think a more beneficial for you know someone in my position who's coming to me and discussing these things to go deeper and I why are the issues why can't you get married and these kind of things and just delve in deeper to their students instead of sustained this past God's gonna make it easy for you because because yeah because of the whole thing that people will have you

see marriage um like if you take Nika at the time of the prophet salallahu it does include Nikka in our day and age like this the construct we have today was a part of that Society but they would have had it would would have extended to other constructs that we don't have so so for example for the most part in our day and age this this is an amalgamation a kind of conjunction of two families coming together it's an aggrandized event it's something that is

very formal in nature and it's something that usually uh is done with some utility often Beyond it's not even taking into consideration not that it's ignoring but it often isn't even to do with the sexuality aspect that's just like well that's going to happen regardless so so sure I mean this version also existed in the prophet's time it's not that people for example they got married to make two tribes come together to make two families come together to kind of uh strengthen the bond between certain uh

subclans and and this did happen and it was a huge event a spectacular event but there were many um occasions where in the time of so for example there is an incident I believe in Termini I believe it's uh is it now but one of the companions who is he's coming past the prophet and the prophet says to him that oh I see a bit of uh you know some deities have this uh Trend still that on the day of the nikah they will get a bit of color like some

uh haldi or some kind of some color like that and they will stain the white shirt of the the Gown of the of the of the groom now so this thing uh you have in there's a narration intermediate that I believe it's Abdullah but there's a companion coming Who and the prophet says oh what's this I see some color on your shirt and he says oh yeah I just got married now the prophet says oh did you masha'allah he says well do you remember to throw a a little a little do like oh Lim well they'll be shut you know like

have a have a little little food for some people even if it's a small amount now what's fascinating is check this out because at face value that's just like oh that's a beautiful encounter and it's it's nice and friendly but let's zoom in to the components and take a look at the the kind of the apparatus that plays that okay so here is a companion of the Prophet who's quite close he's considered uh one of the 10 ashram of Heaven now if it is him I believe it is but either way it's a companion

who ahmadina is a small place it's probably the size of the prophet's mask today it was the whole town now you were living in the time of the prophet you get married and you don't even invite the prophet to your wedding yeah you don't even tell the prophet that like there's a huge question uh like when you start to unpark and and kind of like uh bring like separate the components here it's interesting the way

they are also looking at Nikka they are looking at it some of them in ways that for us today is way too casual it's like like if you take the example of the uh the woman that um comes to the prophet now there were I believe more than one woman that approached the prophet to say look uh marry me or marry me after someone now there's an there's the Hadith where the the prophet says uh okay he says I'll marry you to this person

um that you know find um do you have any jewelry or do you have anything and and for some clothes for some cloth and and he says look you're also live only got this one cloth I don't even have much money and and that's all I you know if I give this away what do I wear it and and the prophet says why didn't you come back with a ring give her a ring as a gift and he and he says okay just hang up there and he tries to go get you know and and he comes back he says you know I tried and I thought I could get hold of one but I can't and the prophet says okay do you okay you must know some Quran and he says yeah he says you know

what I tell you what I you guys are married based on teachers from Quran and knowledge and go now that encounter is way too casual for for our construct of nicar you know just an just an encounter like you've just met and hey just all right off you go you two you know go and and so how part of their construct although it did include our construct of Nickelodeon this huge banquet and this amalgamation of families and this really big do and this is now such a bond that

is unbrokable unbreakable right so today nikah and and because we have inherited this is another question that we and I'm not saying that Nika should be something frivolous or light but still uh the way because South Asian Muslims historically we were Hindus right now you have to remember that so you know you go back a few hundred years or at least several hundred years and all of the South Asian thing would have been Hindu for the most part now

you see in our Collective Consciousness there will be vestiges of Hindu tradition so the concept of talaq for us is has been a very heavy one because in Hindu tradition there was no divorce and ideally the woman was to be burnt alive with the husband or if if he died or she was to just remain forever a widow dressed in white now obviously Islam brought the lock but then in the South Asian tradition talaq was like a diet dire kind of exceptional

vicious tyrannical circumstances under which like the woman is uh you know he's basically about to put her into a a Nazi death chamber and you know or it's something like that and then she's allowed to take up a lot so and that's not how it was in the time of the the prophet sallallahu and talaq was if the relationship wasn't working you know it just wasn't working for whatever reason that they just the Quran says well okay then they just go on the their way you know that um

you know or either you live together in with with kind of uh gracefully or you part way with kindness and compassion but so it's we have this social problem and yeah it's a fascinating uh and I mean it's fascinating as an observation but it's obviously very uh serious at the same time you know yeah and and you know we have certain aspects you know um I think um to substantiate these these kind of ideas we try to you know re-read them into the text so you know you will see a lot of um a lot of um subcontinent or

then uh um quoting Hadith for example right just to highlight that and though the Hadith is weak it's a weak Hadith yeah arguably but yeah fabricated yeah yeah but that just to you know show that and I mean you have as an Imam I have people that come to me today and you know they're you know they're going through domestic violence they're they're being abused at home and they still they just say you know what no matter what I'm just gonna stay into I'm gonna stay with this like I I have to this is like it's been built into their conscience that you know they're there's no out there's no other way whereas there's multiple ways you know Ross Montana has given you that right as

a woman right you can ask for talaq right right you can ask for the hola if not then you know the husband can give us the lock there's all these ways but you know it's become such a taboo subject in the subcontinent um it's very sad to see yeah and this is it's not to say it's not to say that people should give up on relationships that's not what I would uh Advocate I would feel that if something is worth fighting for people should always fight for it but at the same time it should not you know how you're saying and you going into chaplaincy we'll be seeing a lot of this that if people are living a misery

if they are you know there's a kind of stubbornness that um know that this can't um you know it's like it's not literally till death to us part but it's like that it's like well unless something is so tyrannical then I shouldn't even if I'm very miserable for years on end and and you get it the other way as well you'll get with men that will say things like well you know that will believe that it's it's okay to to some extent to be abusive uh in the in in the sense of

lot of whether it's actually hitting even people some people will take uh a verse of the Quran the verse of the Quran the hitting verse and use that as a kind of evidence or other people or even if they don't in hindsight they will use it maybe they won't use it to begin like if they ever get abusive then they will say well you know Islam says this and like they'll vindicate their actions through um through Islam and uh and people and that so I mean I I know you've you've also done some some work on this whole on the verse of the hitting verse and

things like this how have you found the reaction to to these topics yeah I think when I when I started my inamat I was very naive I thought oh everyone's going to accept it you know of course who wants to hit their wife who wants to do that but unfortunately um from the subcontinent um as well as you know the Middle Eastern Community I've seen quite a you know uh pushback on the concepts of this and unfortunately um you know I do have some experience um on the subject based on on hitting no no no on addressing the subject you go I personally I personally have some

experience as well right woman or my wife woman where's the tea oh the the poison this is poison no my wife is on the screen she can she can vouch for me though from the look you know she knows if you if if you need help blink twice okay just we'll contact I will call 9-1-1 from here alhamdulillah no no but um to be um you know unfortunately it's very sad you know when I when I did address this issue as an Imam on a college campus so

you know majority students of course you know there would be some relevance and I think you know um growing up in the US you know there's already you know you know that culture is not there of hitting wives and whatnot but still some people have anger issues and whatnot so I'd actually give a hook on this and I addressed the issue and I said look let's not get to the point you know some Scholars I when I was doing um Research into the issue they even said the the verse was advocated there was nothing of the verse that it was abrogated now let's put down the side um you know the scholars who did not allow the Law whatever that may be you know even if there was a lot of it they say it has to be like in this walk and it has to be very tapping but even those

who even rejected that with some of my teachers that's a rather naughty naughty discipline going on it's like it I I mean some people I I don't know like those I I haven't yet to meet a guy that can just do that to their wife like I I don't think you know guys have the ability to control themselves so they must walk actually funny thing um when I was studying Pakistan a teacher hit his student within this walk and hips so we had a schwaba um in the University um for memorization he had a student with a Miss walk um thereby making the association

he was he was fired they took him out oh wow they said the next day he was brought in front of the whole university came he said you can't teach her if you're gonna hit with the Miss Walk we're not talking about like about it like you know he's like I was like real real menu sticks right right that's we don't use Miss walks you see this stick I've got here this is what we use I saw teachers subhanallah this is not like my classmates would know they would actually go and buy mops and you know the wooden moth was like this thick mops and then they would like take it off of the mop and they would tie it with tape and that's how they would hit students

like this is like um I don't know what's in their head but yeah reminding me of my childhood I'm getting all nostalgic no I have trauma so I'm still going through my um counseling but um kicked him out they were just sitting within this walk so I mean so a lot of my teachers were very very um you know um very upfront with like you know there's no hitting at all and then of course if you look at the Hadith on the issue right you see if she says

the Quran is very clear in the issue that you know so you know the prophet saws is implementing the Quran right he was asked uh it was like so he implemented it and he did not do that so I mean is there any men that you can say now they're better than of course not so this whole idea of being going um towards you know a physical um kind of um trying to teach their wives I don't think there's benefit in it actually um you know I talked to some of my teachers um and you know um blah blah comes with different meanings in the Quran right it doesn't just come for hitting there's

many Allah right um give them examples so there could be a other ways to understand these things but I think you know coming from culture backgrounds you know a lot of times the culture kind of um it's already a lens that we put on when we review certain things yeah and I yeah I mean that's the cultural thing is and I believe that's how IBN sure as well um kind of explains the verse as many people I have in my explanation tied it into trajectory hermeneutics as well and said look it was to do with that there

was this thing there but as the culture um changes and this is why um the from the from the fatawa of and other people that it was Haram to hit and he's from the student of ibna bus that as the day and age had changed that this verse was not in effect but it was in essence referring to those cultures where people all were a part of that and it gave so and I gave the example of this and I've cited it on a few occasion of in recent

times where you had some uh I believe a Moroccan singer which this woman who had made this statement in an interview like a modern woman um young woman like she and she'd said something about you know if if I did something wrong and my husband didn't slap me then what kind of a man is he and this then and this was about I think four or five years ago she said this and it became this huge hoo-ha and it was in all the the press and you know when and then women were hating on her and other people was and she was she did respond she was saying I'm not justifying domestic violence I was just saying that

and it comes back to this thing of like she said that if I'd stepped out of that you know after all my husband's a man and and and then it comes back to the conventional understanding of what does that mean but you go back 1400 years to a warrior lifestyle and what it would have meant there so it's it's very um yeah like something that's one way of yeah yeah I think that's super important you know one of my friends I just met him in DC when I was there um um he's a he's telling us

yeah yeah yeah yeah I I think we spoke about you actually um he's been to your house and stuff um yeah so we were talking about this and he um he just did his uh Masters and he's doing his PhD now um and um I actually um the the advisor who's doing his advisor for SPG is one of my teachers has a little shake so hey um who's a student of sheikhram not the way as well um so he was telling me that his Masters was on the on the qaida right um right that the the customary practices and you

know and I think that's a very important thing to um to um keep in mind especially when we're looking at certain rulings yeah because another because you see the day and age the society has changed and we and that is especially within the Maliki method and another methods that Allah like we it is given it decides on what goes and so today not just that kind of abuse that kind of abuse is clearly out of order uh and it is against the

teachings of the Prophet salallahu alaihi but also emotional abuse or things like this need to also people need to understand these things that they're not because there is a you see because people may be looking at things from a different country's perspective or a different time and and the day and age is is different today so

so things like controlling behavior for example this is in the modern Earth it is abusive now people and I think there is a lag I think some people are obviously kind of Awakening to uh to this uh realization but there is a bit of a lag sometimes between what is happening and then when it's reported to somebody Islamic then the Islamic person might just say well you know in Islam this is okay and because there's nothing in the Quran

that goes clearly against uh this kind of stuff and and then thereby inadvertently creating a distaste for Islam in the hearts of people and that's not right you see and that's but very condemnable because you have the Hadith that you see you're not allowed to speak to people in a way that uh

that people then um because that that's what it then leads to you know this uh yeah so these are yeah wow like yeah and I think that's what I experienced actually growing up one of the I think you were asking me earlier do I have any mean role models and the problem the problem that you know I faced growing up was I saw this very different picture of Islam right I was throwing this very cultural you know the movie Maulana that you know I love my teacher with all with my full heart and he knows that but I I strongly disagree with you know the way that you know the kind of abuse and the treatment of kids and the way that they presented Islam to

us because we were presented Aslam in a completely different context and it was very hard it was rigid um I I usually taught my community with some I think some of my students maybe watching this you know whenever I used to see my teacher I would start shaking like that's how scared we were you know and as in as in getting beats and beating and getting beat yeah yeah when I was doing you're very young how does in your time they were doing this as well yeah yeah I mean I mean I get it we had it going on in our time but uh the same thing same Yoshi didn't have the update

the latest processor old processors but you know he I think it's come now it's like he's like [Laughter] um but that was the reality you know um we we were told that you know we could not wear anything other than like the rocket music like you know and if we were we would actually run away I remember running around the Masjid so the teacher does not see me because I would get yelled at I love how you know through the like social constructivism kind of

lens how um how a lot of uh I mean let's say they see uh culture and maulana's and and the public by extension but especially because with the public are just public so the maulanas and the the clergy will often uh subconsciously just reinterpret and fill in all the gaps with this dizzy culture thing of like so they will use words like they will says for the the Islamic stuff or the time of the Prophet they will say Roti

like they will say the sahaba was sitting down eating Roti and this happened and they obviously never say Roti so yeah but this they feeling I love it it's like amazing it really proves the the psychological you know there's several theories that when we teach things or uh there's been several studies where people a very famous one called um Bartlett study of the ghosts where he gives this a bunch of people these stories in Cambridge to to read through and then they have to reiterate them the

stories are from uh America and part of it involves things that are not native to Cambridge and the UK and the whole purpose of the study is when the people they thoroughly read it and they have to recap it the next day they substitute words for what they assume um but they so for example the the story involves certain I think Native Americans and or certain tribe and they're going hunting for seals in the boat but then everybody remembers recalls that as fishing um

so because that's the substitute that they have in the UK they don't go hunting for seals so it just goes to show it like that there were many examples where they keep even the boat in fact it wasn't it was a specific thing but they all substitute it as canoe or bolt or because they use things that their frames of reference no as opposed to the actual story and this is a fascinating discussion for Reliable Mana where you transmit something by meaning because you will resort to your frame of reference for it

um but yeah it is um uh it's it's it's interesting yeah yeah right okay yeah and you know that's one reason that led me down this path to you know go and study because I felt that there was a gap you know I I felt that I didn't have people I could relate to I didn't I couldn't talk to you know and nowadays A lot of times you know you have two camps you have the traditional Camp of molanas and imams and you have those like you know young imams um relatively young who's like trying to change the narrative and trying to work and you know be relevant to the youth you know like Imam had his

um Q um his Snapchat um question answer yeah um you know Tick Tock you know a lot of my students were like oh can you go on Tick Tock and I'm like I never even downloaded Tick Tock but sure okay I'll download it and I'll be on there so so just like you know trying to be relevant I think um you know that's one thing that I really appreciate um from the younger Scholars that he knows they have that relationship that you know I didn't have growing up yeah wow yeah that's you know and your studies now have uh um you you've kind of branched into

iftar with yeah yeah so that's a whole fresh perspective I take it is it truly is and and you know I think Marshall may Allah come and you know all the teachers who are working at Salam Institute because it's really they're really trying to uh you know train um like you were talking about you know those mawlanas presenting Islam or presenting something in their own sense and trying to you know um convey that to the people um and a lot of times when it comes to fatawa it's even more difficult because certain people um you know back in the day when we

didn't have local you know um Native mufti's um Scholars who were trained in fatwa a lot of times you would train you would send a question to Pakistan or a daughter left us somewhere there and you know they would answer the question and send it back and that would cause a lot of issues because the Mufti who's sitting in that other foreign country they're not really subjected to you know knowing the realities of the US or the Western you know the cultures or what's going on on the ground so they give they give a football that's not really relevant um to this context and you know that um now I think alhamdulillah having students like um you know my classmates may Allah bless them all

um they're they're really striving hard to you know answer fatawa and be you know true to the text but at the same time understanding the reality at hand as well how long is uh uh right there is a bit of an Echo by the way coming through are you is it just coming through to your earphones it is isn't it it's not coming from a speaker separately no I don't have any Echo method I can actually hear it I can hear my own voice just coming back I was going to suggest if you just uh slightly maybe if you just disconnect reconnect

okay the just the your earphones and the mic because your mic is uh I think there's just a loop all right I take it all right people yeah because I saw some people in the comment saying it as well and I could just start it wasn't from the beginning okay okay that's is it okay now yeah that's actually yeah I think that's a lot better actually yes so awesome stuff um right so uh with the yeah so so talk to us about this uh with not be any

interesting kind of uh share some gems with us what's going on what's up what have you guys been mashallah looking at what's talk to us you know so I think um it was important so the the ifta is more than just like Akram you know there's many scholars mashallah and they um it's it's quite intensive so it's a full day um once a week it's a full day of classes on Sunday um UK time so for my time it's almost like four a.m in the morning so I get up at 3 30 in the morning and 4 a.m all the way until 1pm in my time so it's a full day of classes and um we have different periods with different Shields so Sheikh

akram's period is more you know um with our research so researching fatwas and um examining them so and being critical I mean you're working with Scholars these are students who have studied and there's like a big criteria to get here so and but I really appreciated how he started with you know um of um where he talks about his um his Sloop his uh sluber fatwa and two of them being things that I I took from that and there's another book he has another one as well so there's two writings that he has for fatwa

um the two main principles He took is um so you don't have any kind of you know um you know when it comes to meth hubs when it comes to you know one school versus the other school and the second thing is use right that is um and um he quotes like I think like three pages of just ayat and Hadid um you know from the Quran where Allah says and he quotes a different night by that and then the prophet right yes and do you place yourself within a meth help or how do you see yeah so traditionally I have studied

um you know one meth Hub so I've studied um I've been trained in the hanafi meth Hub so you know the whole curriculum starting from you know know in order a law and going to koduri and then hidayah and you know going from there so I've studied the whole you know curriculum of the honeymoon and as well as so um I would say in principle I'm hanafi but when it comes to fatwa now studying with Sheikh Akram I've been you know my eyes have been open to this you know this new reality I would say in the sense it's not kind of like um fatwa shopping like a lot of times some people they like to place it all check your

like or people fatwa shop when they go to different mud hubs but it's based on you know the need and the cause and actually there's a beautiful example Sheikh Akram gave us so he was talking about his so he was saying you know you know I've been at what is his fatwa first of all yeah yeah so the first one is that you know it can a must can be done on regular socks as well so usually traditionally hanafi is only Dumas with the wiping over leather socks but um he gave the fatwa that it is permissible to to do it on any kind of site I think Hannah fees I think Abu Yusuf allows thick socks isn't it very he does to say like we can walk two three miles or something yeah yeah yeah though it's

never been accomplished right because you never have until today I think now they have like we'll do gear like some hanafi Scholars have approved it that it's like a special material that you can walk a certain amount of Miles without getting a hold in it so they would allow us on that but with the whole thing thick socks is not really why but if you were walking as in would the socks get pierced and and torn is that the question but then if you're walking if you're walking on Sand though why why would that it wouldn't get pissed if you're walking on Sand true I think I'm they're looking at considering that the companions lived around the desert true that's true if

you walked in sand I'm sure that you wouldn't rip your socks by walking unless you step on a lizard I I think they're thinking more of a um from the perspective of if the terror if the socks can tear from like a certain amount of wear on the socks um that means the nagessa can um penetrate you know hanafi is a very theoretical there so they're thinking theoretically if this was the case so hence this is the Masala and this is the issue the theoreticians so [Music] um I know um you know I was just talking um and I know so some schools are not

theoretical and they don't like these kind of things famous you know the hanafis do incident of when the person came to Imam Malik and he said uh you know if if a cow falls into the world um how much water do we extract and he said well has it fallen in I said no he said well when it falls in then come and ask the hennesseys would have gave you answer around the spot they would have not only given you an answer for they would have said well if it was a goat it was a chicken if it was a it was a lizard if it was a frog yeah so yeah so Sheikh I couldn't gave this so he's like you know I've he was

attacked because you know he is comes from more of a traditional Hannity background as well so he was attacked for giving the fatwa so and one of the students in the class was Chef you're following your desire your Hawa so he said um so he he told that to shake and Sheikh Akram was like um he was like let me explain you the difference between roxa and Hawa so he says Hawa is only um so it only can be Hawa if there's no benefit and there's no religious benefit for example he said would you ever do must on your socks outside of voodoo um so I mean no one enjoys doing muscle on their socks right so usually you know they want their socks to be dry and

clean what not for Comfort purposes so he said that if there's no benefit outside of ibada purposes that cannot be Hawa it's only because no one would just do that for their desires and you see I would often say to people that uh you see Hawa in Arabic has a strong connotation to um to kind of like a lust a a deep-seated lustful desire for something not just like shahua is just uh lust in

a sexual sense but it doesn't have to be that kind of uh sexual tension kind of lust but it could just be a deep deceited desire that we have that is it's kind of enveloped in greed almost for like I want money I want I want this I want that to the extent that Allah says do you not see a person who takes his Hawa to be his God meaning that they follow this you know this kind of response as uh lakan and these people would refer to it in

psychoanalysis that lust has nothing to do with like nobody you know if if that lust is not uh that kind of Desire is not oh I would like to pray in a certain way if that's your dark desires then then then you're pretty good and safe if your dark desires are I would like to fold my arms in Salah instead of doing this and then that is practically a saint

I was noticing some of the echo thing coming back if you try and that is odd actually normally they should never should we shouldn't reverberate if it's on the earphones see yeah that is strange I don't know why the mic is is it still there uh no no no wait there no it's not actually all right so I took one off so we'll see one yeah yeah yeah let's all right let's if it does bring it back just just uh maybe disconnect it and just reconnect it see if that yeah I'll just do that against the yeah right okay so that but that's great to hear you know your this

this um convergence of path with his and you know an amazing uh enlightened uh individual of this age and somebody much needed and he does stand up to a lot of uh criticism against him at times yeah sure yeah so yeah we were able to I mean alhamdulillah through his guidance you know um I I think just get out of our comfort zones and just you know um start to explore the realm of fatwa because you know the realm of fat was so deep and it's so vast and you have all these different Scholars who are coming from different perspectives maybe some

that you agree with some you don't agree with I mean there's room right Imam Malik says right so as a mathematics as everyone can be accepted from and rejected from so Scholars they they can make mistakes and you know the Hadith that is he gets it right he gets two rewards and if he does if he strives and he really struggles and he um it really true with himself and with the text and with Allah and he gets it wrong then he still gets one so you know alhamdulillah under that you know we were able to um look at some interesting fatala um you know what is an interesting one that you guys looked at what's something

yeah anything so we looked up yeah yeah we looked at one I'm actually it's not a fat one actually it's very interesting photo and aokido but um of Muhammad um um the I think he's a Tunisian scholarship of Islam of the 20th century and the yes of the Quran Mufti of the Maliki yes yes so we um and he's one of um you know so Scholars that you know martial I read some of his Works before amazing works masha'allah so he you know a uh a teacher of mine an indirect teacher he's the teacher of one of my

somebody I have each other as well one of my teachers um someone who's like a father figure to me it just happened that the day we were going over that fatwa um he was here in Milwaukee so I was able to you know talk to him about the issue um so that's awesome yeah so the issue basically is you know um is the issue of the mehdi Imam something that is established and agree um agreed in the Desi World they call him menti they mix it up with men have you heard no I haven't I haven't

you've never heard this wow no no no wow I I grew up always hearing it as Mandy oh wow they say Mandy like honestly even till today they say Mindy like uh I I'm not sure if anybody in the comments would as as they've also experienced this people they I used to think that the Imam Madi was some somehow associated with Mendy growing up like maybe he would have some you know like you get some people sometimes dye their beard yeah they were Mindy and stuff and Mendy is henna the Urdu word for henna

like just having that so people I guess it's that appropriation isn't it what we were speaking about cultural appropriation so they're not familiar with the word Mahdi so say Medi and then from there because in Urdu they would just kind of blend the her that some people assumed mendi oh it must be Mindy you know maybe maybe there was a DOT on one of the pages and somebody just read you know as the poet says he says uh foreign

[Music] to meet somebody intimately close um because the spelling is the same mushroom is a criminal it's just a DOT so some flyers come and just kind of foreign foreign

and they kept reading it as which means betrayal and like so meaning one dot can change it all but here it didn't change it all but it just gave it a flavor you can give her a new meaning so yeah so okay yeah so um you know the first one um um it kind of goes over the concept of um

this is what happens when you hear from one ear it goes in one year so he kind of addresses the issue and he looks at it from a you know he zooms out of the issue and he says you know let's look at the different let's really examine the different camps is it really fair to say all the sunnis accepted the the issue of um something from um from from you know from the foundations of the leaf or not and he said you know it's fair to say that all the shias I mean those who ascribe to that school of thought I mean the Mahdi is something big for them right because you know he is the one he's a weighted Imam but for sunnis um it doesn't really seem to play that

big of a role um it doesn't really seem to fit very comfortably within you know the Paradigm of Sunni thought so he looks at it and then he looks at the different Hadith and you know me and my friend we were able to um so he they broke us up in two so he presented the first part of the fatwa which goes over the historical aspect of him they say you know um with you know the whole issue of Mia and whatnot and how that kind of fits in there so you know someone risen to go against stand up against and whatnot and why it made sense from that perspective and why you know they they um told stories of this to you know bring that Pride back into them and you

know not to be you know um and put down in that sense and then he looked at the other aspect of the Hadith which I looked at um which were all the assani I think 18 17 or something like that sahaba narrate the Hadith and I think um you know some of them you know he he puts them in three different those which are just Maria and rasulullah um which are Hadith those which are this um and those which are just made of stories so he says these are the three different categories where these fall in and I think Sheikh Nino he summarized it very beautifully

um uh he summarized the fatwa um he says right and so those Hadith authentic um you know to attributed to the prophet saws they're not explicit and those which are explicit they're not authentic so that's really how you can summarize this in a nutshell of the issue yeah and and this has actually been uh you covered a few people from the uh especially the malikis that have been vocal historically on this issue beginning with who was very in his uh

you know his Works he brings several of these are Hadith and he he uh quite um you know openly states that this is actually something from the Shia tradition that crept into Sunni Islam over a few hundred years so he says that if you look at early Islam they don't have this Mahdi thing and even for example Imam tahawi in his does not listed and so he says that what happens is within several several hundreds of years of Islam from the Shia

Islam at their belief in the Mahdi being Paramount this crept into Sunni Islam and found its place very kind of vocal and he's bringing chains and and it's interesting because then you have even shot the bee see shatabi Imam shatabi he seems to argue that although he does accept the the coming of Jesus uh but he also is very skeptical of this Mahdi and he seems to say well the Mahdi is Jesus right because that was one of the opinions wasn't he right right yeah that the the

Mahdi is Jesus uh so he seems to say well you know that is the the Mahdi otherwise what is another uh but then you get other people obviously when you were investigating and researching was it the takikatan uh nothing or that that that book or what were you no it was just the um so we we were it was part of our curriculum so it was just taken out of the um I don't know where it was taken from okay so it was put into the curriculum and we we just had the um part of our PDF so I don't know exactly where because he has it he has it in his tachycat as well there is a book uh in correct uh about

the Taki heart and it's basically just different Masa ill that have been kind of collated and published so but I'm sure he does discuss it in other places as well so maybe they've taken it from his sort of see it as well but he has a an interesting um and this it's the same kind of thing really saying that well you know is there anything sahih and uh and there isn't really that comes down to mind but it's okay this one was a specifically a question I think someone was asking him a question and he was answering it so it was like a sua in jawab so there's a in the beginning and then um after that you had the job so I

think this is from like I don't know if he has a book like that or something like that but um it may be a collection of his fatawa yeah yeah I'm pretty sure it is that the ducky it's just it's like that just lumped together kind of sure um responses to things so yeah but but it is a wow okay that's an interesting um discussion really and just just the fact that you're even uh whatever side look it's not I I often say to people it's not about um you know if a person wants to believe something they can believe

um they're more than welcome to believe and there are many Muslims who do believe uh in let's say the concept of the Mahdi or the um but equally there have been Muslims who are equally qualified in Islam uh very you know Elite status sharehold Islams uncially and extensively on Islam who have also had the other view it is not these things are not um not you know that we should have a

compassion of look of a kind of uh of a of an harmonious acceptance that there will always be people that have uh that will be different that if a person slightly does not accept a view if you want to accept it you accept it it's not something you know look for yourself at what you believe and if you believe that something makes sense to you then that's wonderful and if it gives you more meaning in Islam then you you know go with that ironically in Akida the most Scholars write it's Haram to do

yeah and most Scholars write that in apida it's actually Haram that's the I know there's a difference of opinion but the the majority view is that to just blindly following that you need to believe it for yourself you can't just say well I believe it because he told me to believe it and so to believe it you need to really examine that do you believe it like what is this talking about and if you find yourself with and this goes with with beliefs in general that if you find yourself saying well okay well hmm I can't just you know having

looked at this this is what I'm being told this makes sense to me I can't just blindly follow in faith so I will go with this and yeah that's um and that's the issue I think you know um especially coming from the subcontinent a lot of times you know um Islam is presented as this full package and to be part of Sunnah it's like a whole package deal right so you have to agree with one two three four five if not like I remember there was a discussion that we were having um some of my classmates some of like the rolema and we brought up the issue of sahab of like magic especially on the

prophet sallallahu right you know there's a big debate was it was a magic done on the prophet saws or not and um and we so we went really deep and I actually I went and I looked at this issue and because everyone's like oh no no all the hanafi scholars agree on the issue like it happened right and I I do agree that I mean like you know um Imam of tahawi he actually you know great Mahadev was a who was a hanafi he does actually he does um acknowledge that in his opinion actually happened to the prophet saw sudden but on the other hand you have other people for example Imam of the sauce and Quran he actually mentioned um a statement

foreign so everybody you see when people they some magic um it begins like this like everybody

agrees that magic is trickery Illusions and uh slate of hand and um yeah and it is potions that influence mood and behavior so everybody accepts these things like if I even today if I get if if I gave you a sedative you'd go to sleep if I you could give somebody a stimulant and they'll get excited and you could give somebody an aphrodisiac and they become sexual and you could give somebody uh you know you could you could give things that promote for example oxytocin in the brain and you could give people love drugs and they

would fall in love very easily and these things giving potions or giving things that influence mood and emotions they categorize that as magic and that sure and today science does explain it and that everybody accepted these things as magic even um doing optical illusions on people like the Great Indian uh rope trick that they had you know the kind of and the snake rope trick and and very famous ancient kind of Indian tricks uh these things or you get people doing magic

shows uh you're going to get a lot of magicians doing things like David Blaine and all these things how do you explain this how do they do this and that's all part of the trick isn't it that you know Copperfield and all these kind of tricks so everybody agrees on that kind of magic what they disagree on was does it go beyond that where it would become something that I can do things like I can turn this bottle into a car oh you can't see the bottle there is yeah I can turn this bottle into a car that's right

that's actually altering realities like concrete realities like I will alter a reality can I um just do things which which become basically paranormal they're not just tricks or hallucinations or uh slate of hand or magic as we understand magic conventionally there are actual uh fantasy magic sure what if we call it fantasy magic like I'll turn that chair into a dog right well this kind of stuff

um that doesn't happen I mean that that part would be uh counter-rational and against the voice of reason and would be absurd so now this part where you do tab as they said that you change um that stuff is what many of these challenged and said look this cannot happen and you can't just and so even when it comes to can you make somebody ill so the people said well you could if you

could interfere with them like if I gave you something to drink and I put something in that I could make you ill right but the question comes with what about non-contact so I'm sitting in the UK somebody is sitting in Pakistan and I'm kind of blowing into a cup and going Hocus Pocus and saying things here or I'm holding up a doll and I'm poking the doll with a needle yeah and that person in Pakistan is getting becomes paralyzed so this is the problematic concept of

margin that um that many that that one of the unders one of the attributions right from Imam is that this stuff does not make any sense it is not you know it is absurd and it has no reality and I'm pretty sure several of the hanafi fatawa are also the same in saying that look these things are only if they make contact like you drink something that I put in that drink then I believe it could have a tattoo an impact on you but this kind of non-contact a distant at a distance spooky business at a distance

this time it yeah and and that's what Imam just asked he says he actually says so I mean they probably didn't have a term for it back then but he says or a poison or some kind of thing that it can be and and he uses he does for you know a couple times where the Prophet saws he was given you know certain meat that was poisoned or something like that so exactly to your point um and that's why the Hadith in um

um actually Imam Evan Josie he mentions another narration he says that it's not actually he says became sick so that's how you know he was affected if we want to accept that whole incident nonetheless I mean it's just it can't be supernatural has you know an amazing amazing discussions on this as well in fact we did a joint uh kind of um a whole presentation on this a few years ago it was amazing and do you know it's a great presentation oh amazing

Allah bless you you know recently this has become more of an open discussion in countries like Pakistan now so you had just recently I believe uh mawlana said who passed away as well from the brilli community who very openly um I believe dismissed these claims saying that look this is disrespectful to the prophet that we uh say that people did Magic on him and now even amongst the theobandis so if you go to YouTube there are several debates now

um between the open these and the open these uh so in Pakistan in Urdu at length where they are debating uh where one side is saying look it is actually disrespectful to say that uh and it goes against the Quran to say that anybody did Magic on the prophet because in the Quran Allah says uh about the you know that those who do uh what is it that is and

um that Allah is condemning those people who say that you follow a man who magic has been done onto because that doesn't make any sense so yeah it is interesting to see this becoming now finally you know alhamdulillah it's becoming more of an open discussion in Pakistan because 10 years ago this was not an open discussion in Pakistan but now uh in the last three years it's become quite an open discussion so you've got now people are debating it they're bringing up a Hadith they're bringing up they're challenging

both sides and and and and this concept that look we understand that one side you see the side that is believing passionately that the magic was done onto the prophet they're not doing it with a bad intention or to be disrespectful but they they are doing it out of a kind of deep-seated loyalty to the tradition that because it is in bukhari we don't want to we fear that should we dismiss a Hadith in bukhari the whole thing might slip away so it is almost this kind of deep

insecurity and this kind of deep love for the tradition of Hadith but so which in itself is admirable but there is a misplaced love here because what ins in trying to hold on so passionately to the tradition inadvertently there is there is this uh this darkness and this almost a disrespect being casted onto the prophet and his character they're not doing it with intentionally

you know they they uh love the prophet salallahu but this is awesome they're not noticing that in that love you see this this is um Imam Chef he has a poem that is that he intended to do good but ended up doing harm and there are some people who try to honor the parents but end up dishonoring them or harming them because sometimes when you're so eager you're so eager that there's so much

passion that you uh you end up doing more harm than good yeah it is true but it's it's it's not with a it doesn't mean that these people are necessarily they are very sincere and they have a love for the tradition and they trying to preserve it but what they don't realize is the things that are unfortunately then being said about the prophet that some person and it's ironic because you see because the the tradition is that who did this magic a Jewish man that's what

the libidden awesome and who who's a mystery figure and people don't know who he was or what tribe he came from but this Jewish person and what's interesting is that the the prophet and our Prophet but the prophet of the Jews Reigns Supreme against who and our prophet fools victim to just a simple magician from amongst the Jews like look at in that disrespect

to the you know the makam of the prophet sallallahu and the prophet saying in a Hadith like showing these Hadith that the prophet saying that look A person who says this like don't believe like these Hadith are to dismiss these superstitions that look A person who says this in the day nothing can harm him not even magic you know there's this people bringing this Hadith of the Prophet saying that oh these dates are so wonderful that if a person ate seven of these you know not even magic could harm him and a person the prophet saying that you

know how powerful Allah's Quran is you know how powerful and amazingly empowering the malware that they destroy the shackles of superstition that nothing not even magic could harm this person now what's fascinating in in a shocking way is that but then they're saying that the very person that's teaching these things is afflicted by Magic so so as to open the door for people to say well oh but I thought your Prophet is teaching these things and how does he not practice what he preaches and how

does he get s yeah and and I get it that this camp on not doing that with that intention in fact they're not even know that they haven't even thought that this would be a consequence this is an unintended consequence yeah of what they're doing they're trying to preserve a tradition in sahil bukhari and trying to say look you know let's hold on to sahil bukhari because otherwise we're worried but what's fascinating is that you take the Indian subcontinent um or especially Pakistan which is predominantly hanafi

and the hanafi mother for the most part when it comes to fit clashes with sahil bukhari like you you obviously know this and and in fact sahil bukhari for the most part when it comes to practicing Islam it's very in its orientation it's very um and he's very even critical of Imam Ibraham arguably in the connotation of Allah yeah he doesn't say his name yeah he doesn't say his name and in fact arguably refers to him in a very disparaging way

somebody said some keep somebody from the people said this and it's like oh that's Imam Abu hanifa that's not just somebody but it's somebody from the people made a claim like this and and then it very harsh in his words and he went against the Sunnah of his messenger went against it and so when we are studying the Hadith in countries like Pakistan there is a huge part where we are having

to go you know at loggerheads clashing with Imam bukhari time after time because the hanafi method it's it's diametrically opposed to many of the Hadith at least Within so it's it's just it's fascinating that well you know that I don't know why there's such a concern about one Hadith inside of what when all of the chapter of Phil we spend months in Hadith class saying

well so what if Imam bukhari brought this it doesn't matter because we go with such and such evidence right yeah yeah it's super interesting and I think you know um this is part of that perspective that you know back in some you know Scholars like himself um they bring you know um there was a changing of the hanathi method so you know we have we have less concerns with certain things and you know it really goes against the but um no one's really concerned about those who they're just talking about and that's why you know to say you know if we were to reevaluate and re do the

process of which they had and stuff we wouldn't come with the same photo that we have today yeah that is a faster I do love sheikha tabik is is you know his whole thing on his discussion on the hanafi method is is absolutely so fascinating and I there's been so much demand to get him back on and I've been trying to uh if you speak to him do drop let him know that I will please you know tell him that look come on let's get this convo going I know he's been busy he's been busy yeah no I think it'll be very beneficial inshallah wow but you know what wow sure it's been it's been epic I

mean this whole uh discussion right from your your own journey to CR you know from a background of non-islam to coming to Islam discovering um the academic side your pursuit in Pakistan and that culture and coming back and facing the secular side of things and the challenges that brings to uh Firkin whether it's in sync or does it you know the update is lagging we're kind of awaiting and right down to several discussions uh some fatawa and

some Hadith and Concepts Concepts and wow you know it's been and seriously I've loved the discussion it's been an honors you know um I've been watching you for a very long time since you know much less since you're halakat and you're Doodles and Monday night with Mufti as in public so I'm benefited and you know so being here with the man the myth the legend is the amazing honor Allah

um if people would like to reach out to you share what is the the the best platform yeah so I I have bought um Instagram and um and Facebook they can just um search share safe um on um Instagram the letter M and I'm on Instagram as well as Muhammad on Facebook so they should be able to find me and

what I'll do is I'll try to uh include your Instagram link on the YouTube description all right so Sugarland once again I mean I mean an absolute pleasure and we'll stay in touch definitely inshallah for sure do you share any fascinating research with me people out there likewise shukran Allah bless you all for really you know just joining at this Godly hour especially those of you in the UK and I'm just you know just keeping with it and just really being there because you too you know people who are watching these people who engage

with us they leave a comment they leave uh a thought they they leave their opinion they you you in many ways are a part of this very Enterprise so Allah bless you all keep yours I mean I mean and if you want to reach out to me you already know that you're more than welcome to um Instagram drop your message there and you're more than welcome to reach out to me on patreon I do have one-to-one sessions consultations if you want that on patreon it's patreon.com forward slash mouth Sheikh are you on patreon

I'm not I'm not on patreon right but you yeah you're gonna launch spectacularly yet you're young blood yet yeah following your guys's footsteps learn from the many mistakes that we've made and avoid them you know allow us to follow you guys footsteps and be beneficial to all my all your lectures and all the guests that you brought onto the show and you know your time commitment I know it's not easy we're doing a lot of back and forth so I know it takes a lot from your side so may Allah see you next time likewise people take very good care of yourselves