Recordings › Unanswered Questions- An interview with Mufti Abu Layth · 6 Apr 2015 › Segment 11 of 15

Is Mufti Abu Layth a modernist?

hadeeth ahadith ahaadeeth hadis hadees ahaadith malik ibn anas malik bin anas imam maalik imam malik ibn anas imaam prayer leader 'urf muftis kufr kuffar kafir kaafir kaafirun disbelief koran quraan al-quran as-salaf salaf al-salih salaf us-salih al-salaf early generations al-madinah madeenah yathrib 'alim aalim al-din ad-deen ad-din religion

Branded a modernist: the school of Madinah, chains of transmission and dress versus thought

QuestionWritten question · questioner not identifiedAnswered 6 Apr 2015Segment 11 of 15 in the recording2015-04-06-S11

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This segment39:21 to 44:32 · 5 min 11 sGeneral teaching

The answer in brief

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No: he follows the school of Madinah and Imam Malik, teaches thousand-year-old texts and holds chains back to the Prophet, and calls boycotting classical thought a heresy. Looking modern in dress, he says, is not modernism, and Abu Hanifa too was criticised for his dress.

In more detail

Asked how he responds to being branded a modernist, Mufti Abu Layth says he is not one, and distinguishes being of one's age in appearance and outlook from one's views. He says he has always called to the school of Madinah, the understanding present in Madinah in the time of the salaf, among them its scholar Imam Malik, whose views he passionately agrees with and tries to follow; the texts he has taught for years are traditional ones, usually over a thousand years old, including one of the oldest summary texts of the school of Madinah, which he has taught for two or three years [?]. He wholeheartedly disagrees with modernism as an academic approach, which he defines as calling to boycott classical thought or feeling unbound by it, saying one does not care what the imams said because they did not live in the twenty-first century; that attitude is wrong because the deen is a legacy conveyed generation to generation through chains, and he counts his chains in hadith and Quran, going back through his teachers to the Prophet, as an invaluable gift. He has never called to boycott classical thought and considers doing so a heresy, saying we need our legacy today more than ever. At the same time he says some misinterpret the legacy as requiring that one dress like the imams: Islam never sought to Arabise the world, and Abu Hanifa himself was criticised for adopting the new fashion of long sleeves. Appearing modern in dress or manner does not mean calling to boycott classical thought, and he believes the only true way forward is to reclaim traditional Islam.

Question as read aloud · questioner not identified
Speaking of traditional Islam, you have been branded a modernist by some. How do you respond to that?

The question was reconstructed from Mufti Abu Layth's restatement; the questioner's own words are not in the recording
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Transcript

machine39:21 to 44:32 · click a time to seek · dotted terms open the glossary