Ustadh Nouman Ali Khan & Mufti Abu Layth - A Discussion on Contemporary Issues

[Music] and so they should be executed wherever they they're found as part of the Fulfillment of divine sunah which means that is not the foreign policy of Islam towards mik it's actually the policy of Allah towards the rebellious in line with the sun of all the other prophets something similar to that is said by I think also people like T Swan and a few people who say the RDA they've said the RDA punishment was there but in that time only uh a few other contemporary but what is interesting is there's a I think is he

lives in America that uh he's written a book on he has a very and he's got some YouTube videos on it as well very interesting actually he speaks about you see when R first begins how R was a strategy if you look at the Quran Allah is explaining that CU When a person abandon something it creates doubt like obviously like let's say you Embrace an ideology now and you're seen as an intelligent person a week later you leave it people think oh there must have been something wrong with that because you know this guy is intelligent like why would you leave it so making

reference to the verse in the Quran when like the Y said where they say that let's [Music] that you see we will do this as an attempt to create that that's right so people will think that oh man these guys intelligent people there must be something wrong with this message and and some people have have seen that to counter that strategy there were threats made so that's one interpretation another I mean to add to that I think so tribal identity was Supreme in Arab

Society yeah and uh well actually Kia is a pretty good indication that Muslim identity considered the Muslims who were sitting there from different tribes riff like once the fighting begins they're not going to be Val you because they have no tribal affination and then they come back testifying that so much as you know so much as he spits and they fight to cash the spit on the ground right so they they understood that loyalty has now changed now the thing is when you forgo your tribal identity in that Society you decare war against that tribe right and if youir G you're fair

game now the Muslims are in that the um is the early um is in that ecosystem where your identity is with the people you're affiliated with and they've got a new it's not tribal now it's the it's the Shah walking out of that is actually especially in the middle of what is an ongoing war is actually a declaration it is an act of treat it is I have I'm joining the other side you know so like which is very similar to um you know under under peaceful circumstances in international law under peaceful circumstances a Canadian can say I forgo my Canadian citizenship I

want to become an American oh whatever true but under war in times of War forgoing One citizenship is actually considered you know and you can like even military personel milary can forgo their citizenship under normal circumstances but in during times of War that's actually this is not something limited to like Islamic disc I mean it's like how the world Works what's still crazy as you say still against the

of whole thing of Allah has mentioned those people who do this they they responsible they answerable to Allah Quran yeah you're talking about the real deal Quran was just talking about to what really IR me in sometimes in Islamic Studies uh discourse is how Quran is made this tertiary reference that that's not the real conversation the real conversation

is what XY and Z the like glossy no it is so like this verse like a clear verse now think about this is this is the first must of that's the favorite thing to to by the way anybody has like a allergy the first thing they go after but and even to say okay there's no until you enter it that's still it's it's illogical is like to say that okay look I tell you what don't worry about you can Embrace if you want Oh but once you embrace

it and so so this is the I had an interesting argument with a scholar that shall okay an entire discussion about how men have a degree over women actually that doesn't hold the AY begins

okay 11th pronoun it's the 11th time they for women is used starting with what noun not the entire the entire Ayah is a discussion of how women in their During the period are at a degree of disadvantage and here's what that looks like and to take that and then pull from it the women have a degree less than women men like I'm at a l how did this

become all the other on how that and then on top of that there's is normal structure that's purely textual you know but then there's like 30 pages of well because they have menes and because they're their tongue and

because are like first at least do justice to the primary text before we jump you know on like reinforcing our supposition using like other Tech it's crazy I thought it was just wild and then I I discussed it said well that opinion also ex exists but the vast majority of all that I was like okay fine vast majority you why have this I just want to know what their thought process was and you've got to you see this is another this is what I kept saying in that discussion you've got to understand that people who trying they

may have tried their best for their own age like there's an understanding a global understanding like people may have felt at certain times this is fine everybody does this and they reflected they understood let's say from the the text so whatever it is based on their contextualized understanding so it's not so today there is a heightened I'm not saying that there wasn't you know throughout time a voice for human rights and stuff like but there is a heighten voice a cry for things like freedoms in this day you know since this last century there has been

now people that will have had an effect on people regardless it will have an effect on you and some people they feel that oh because the West have made this cry we have to be anti it like it's somehow like they like somehow some people feel anything that comes from uh let's say non-muslims are saying it that means oh this can't be Islam you know we've got our own understanding like I spoke about human freedoms human values somebody said oh are you talking about the ones that the human rights chter has kind of listed because in Islam you know we've got our own understanding of Human Rights and human and okay maybe on some discussions it'll be interesting to see

what they've got to say but the point is that this methodology of just ruling anything El that look as in the is it is the property of the Bel you know I think about this I've been think about this issue for a while too what I've arrived at is that first of all internally without even talking about what the West is internally we have a problem I'll I'll sum the problem up with a with an example why do I make wo the way I do I have never looked up my dad made it that way I made it that way I don't know the ad for and the vast majority of

the BET even the IMs of our M won't know why the W is in the order that I said we just do it we just do the there certain assumptions we that the Islam has a certain Baseline you don't question certain practices beliefs attitudes you don't question and everything we think about in terms of Islam we build on top of these presuppositions these a lot of them are just layers and and by the way is one of those prositions that's been well settled into the for a long time we're in an age now where this whole the whole concept of

we cannot afford any presuppositions like after 14 years of trying to study Quran I arriv to the conclusion that I cannot go into a Surah with any presuppositions I have to leave my assumptions aside and just study the text as genuinely as I can and ask as many critical critical questions as I can when I come across an interpretation that doesn't seem to add up for this reason that reason or the other reason I need to be able to ask these questions even if it sounds bad or you have to be genuine to the T right now when you do that you you cannot just do that with your own tradition first of all we have to start with our own tradition we have to do this with our own tradition this is actually genuine scholarship as far

Li that's what it always was people asking the tough questions but we have to do that with the West too not with this reactionary whatever they have to say is garbage but you've got two extremes now you've got the traditional which who says whatever we have is perfect and not subject to question and you got well you know they're on to something they have pretty good values too my problem with the Western model of of Human Rights discour as it is right now is that it shifts every 10 years the marker shifts and what is completely unacceptable

right now by their own standards will become acceptable will become acceptable and glorified and it'll change it'll absolutely change absolutely if if the80s were exhaustive discourse about the harms of drugs on your body and mind and and the immorality of drug use and things like that now it's legal in several States and like a human right almost to take marijuana for medical or Leisure purposes or whatever right gay marage just got signed off in the US you guys know about that Supreme Court signed off on right and the you know what the discussion is on Mormon and you know Orthodox Christian circles polygam

is next okay now we can fight for it now it's not imoral because they've opened the door to all kinds of M right so cuz they're say well if that's okay then this is okay and then they there are other groups that are coming and saying that marrying animals should be okay right cuz you open the door and you know what it's not entirely farfetched what is right now for example considered um like obscene or inent exposure to Children right because there's a there's an age before you before which you cannot get married and things like that right but now uh with the introduction

this the sexual content or you know suggestive content to even children earlier earlier ages how soon before Society decides that we can legalize some of this Stu I mean the morals are always shifting I think that's undeniable I think the the the angle I meant more one is one is okay let's just say look there is a cry in the West for human rights human values and let's just Embrace that whole Artic and just go with their blow well one is to understand that look use it as a point of reflection like to kind of say well look like people are criticizing like people are saying okay there should be Freedom like freedom of

religion is an example now there should be freedoms now you look at something rationally like we have our own pointers we have our own this was another thing this is why I had said that people throw around these terms nowadays and I I completely not only do I dislike these terms but I believe that they don't even stand within our within our discourse the Ed term let's say liberalism conservatism uh the problem with this is people will use this just to dismiss a point you have to say I've asked people to Define what they mean when they say things like this like you know when you say oh um oh you're just being liberal what do you mean you're just going being easy is that what it means does conservative mean being harsh because if

you look at the the says that whenever the prophet fa two issues you know he always went with EAS if they say no no we don't mean by that we mean holding on to tradition well this is tradition like would you say you know like people like this is why I presented I said if you take your labels like this and look at sahab like with his descent and things like RBA and so on and and it's know his the point is people would just I don't know tell me okay well I mean I mean obviously is uh it's got many permutations here but they but they

look at it briefly they say that when they when they're breaking it down they say there's problem where you are kind of like um kind of like increasing so I say you know like I tell you what Give Me 2 kilos of date for 1 Kil of date and swap like that um or rib where this there's a delay like so I give you something but I'm going to take something after a while yeah so there's like a I don't know if if you want to consider a prepaid payment or but especially they make an ex exception for money and in all other things so let's say dates once again as typical examples they use back then so said that there was no R in like it

was only in and he disagreed entirely with every vast majority of everybody on that me an example so he said like if like so if somebody was to say look here's one kilo of wheat I want 2 kilos of wheat from you so one k he said well that's well that's fine as long as there isn't a delay like if we were transacting here that would because yeah so so this is so he says that this is just like in front of he says that only when there's a delay it triggers now now this is an example now

that would be considered I mean I I don't want to sound very controversial but obviously his disagreement in his disagreement in in so many things for example in Salah like or you do want [Laughter] to I tell you something really interesting one and this one is really in Muslim when is given a speech talking people and the time for is gone and somebody gets up and says time for is gone what the hell what you doing we should be praying you should be leading Us in Salah like pray Salah what you doing and and and he just

hears him and then just carries on and they finish and he combines the pra and he he says that the prophet he says the prophet Sall wasallam he combined without hope when there was no hope when there was no suffer and then just in case some people interpret that this was rain and whatever but okay different but he ends it he carries on he

says he wanted his not to be incomplete that meaning like this is who this is the student of the prophet it's not just anybody you know it's not so but by this but by this standard people would just say oh that's and this is my point that you see we don't have that discourse we have a discourse we Bas it on is the was this the understanding in the Quran was it in the Sunnah was this what the sah do they have this and they may have had a difference it's not about just because it sounds easier let's dismiss it by putting a label on it and just taking it out the you know just knock it off the table because we just

take a label to so this this is my point of when I was trying to say that these kind of values today we look at them we look at our tradition we look at the understanding that these people have CU there may have been some sahab who were more maybe or some Sal who may have been slightly more harsh than others but we have to look at the comprehensive picture and the most important thing what did the Quran and Sunnah itself also one thing the Quran seem to insists on that man is this moral being you know using as we you know do babies pick it up or is it pre- and he obviously leads the school on it's pre so this is the n of this kind of

school as opposed to saying the empiricist school that babies get exposed to language and therefore pick it up and they've you know they've all presented their research and he's presented Some solid very interesting research on communities that um um that were like migrant different communities this is one sample but I mean as an example different uh communities that live together that made a patched up language to survive like between themselves it wasn't a complete like so they would call it a pigeon language so we just speak you go you know like this miss out uh propositions miss out but the children turned it into a

Creon and I think it was in Hawaii or somewhere who uses the case study they actually completed the whole structure like as in and that's an interesting of the the inherent ability and also things like uh deaf D and blind children and how and plural children as well and other things that they've looked at how they've developed language but the point anyway I'm trying to get out is they speak of that that we have this language acquisition which maybe Raw it's not like you know you're built for Chinese or you're built for English but there's a universal grammar like a very raw base structure which you are built for this

hard wiy and you grasp and you know you absorb language around you in a similar way I believe that the thing of is talking about this this kind of Base because the other thing the general understanding that the have had is that and the thing is that look this is because the general understanding have is either you have the absolute let's say traditionally or you might have had the or you might have that you must be able to discern right and wrong all the time or what what they

call that you can bu your intellect just like I can tell ly is I can tell this okay on some things like murder you can tell but some things you can't always tell okay and then you have people traditionally you had the vast majority of you had the um the understanding was everything is just Divine commandment so there is no good so for example there's nothing wrong with murder so speak because it's been forbidden it's now considered so they say you know the Divine command is ex um like is it forbid like is it this this this kind of discussion is so distant from the

quranic text yeah exactly yeah exactly where did he learn that it's wrong he just felt bad after he did it it's done it's inherently in your nature exactly and and this is one of at a base level I believe definitely uh I mean not intricacies I mean not like obviously in the Sharia you may have intricacies of is this permissible is that permissible these are interest of law but at a base level of morality and I really I was actually this is what I mean and I really listening to people like people like TR or just other who ain't even unfortunately Muslim but they

speak sometimes so much sense and just listening to different people just hearing okay what do you have to say what do you have to say what and just reflecting it's not always about I think a sense of sometimes arrogance of thinking somebody isn't a Muslim we're not going to listen to anything they have to say we're not going to that wasn't the the message that the prophet Ali wasam B it wasn't the message of the Quran it wasn't the message of it wasn't even the early Muslim communities when they embraced look at the Golden Era they embraced foreign knowledge but then they they they didn't just blindly embrace it but they they saw all these kind of things like they saw these things

they actually became Champion things that weren't Islamic they felt was a clash they distance that from themselves but they didn't become insecure see we have this thing that we become insecure like oh like if you question me about something oh my God like you know what that and I think this tying in with our discussion on apostasy is the problem that people are insecure when one person questions his name it's like just kill or he deserves whether we kill him he deserves this because it's a way of consolidating your own faith really that should never be the case

your faith should be built should be cement it should be solid it shouldn't be something that kind of depends on the validation of other people the other thing that I feel very strongly about the Quran mostly speaks of other prophets and it's a very consistent like it's almost as though if each of them are a drop it forms a river and it flows a certain way right and the prophet is supposed to be a culmination and a continuation really a Perfection of that same and a lot of this discourse seems to be going Upstream like it it contradicts the legacies of prophets

their moral like they're messing the concern for Humanity they didn't come to torture people or kill them or like it's not it's like that you see there's been an immense ritualization of the dean which has then unfortunately fil I like I like that filiz because they made so anent comes up with a conclusion then it gets edged and stone you can't questioning that is know I don't even like to name certain individual Scholars that are landmarks in our history but if you say something against what x said you might

as well be questioning so this is what we've done we've more than cified certain literature in our history depending on school of thought or l in Aro whatever you I'm free and people are Scholars are free to disagree with each other conversation it's fine like I started doing the lectures to stir the boat a little bit so uh I decided to start with B I did a little bit of B and when we got to the story of which The Narrative is unique to the rest of the Quran

because is not anywhere else that that's very unique to the Quran and very unique to the entire story narrative in like even biblical in a biblical sense the what do we know about the Angels like scripture you know so they're in absolute obedience to God you know and they're they creatures of they're creatures ofal protction etc etc okay so he's he decides that he's going to create this this KH and what you get from these angels who are in absolute

obedience to him is what seems like a very offensive critical question like a humble student you know like some some teacher comes along and say I'm going to make him I'm going to give him this position and the humble student gets up you really going to put him he's going to make so much trouble you going to make him class mod that sounds like disrespect Defiance it sounds out of line uh if this was Pakistan or some madasa with a question you get a Cham

too or sort you get something right and they by the way as they say it they say some have looked at this as we are the alternative I actually don't look at it that way that may be the case but I actually more see it as we're not we don't mean any disrespect to you or take anything away from your by posing this question us not understanding that's very very you know I I us not understanding what's going on and US asking this question in no way takes away from your

glory and we don't mean anything by that and simply says eventually explains it to them the answer is very elaborate and very well explained my point was if angels can question Allah straight I don't get it why are you putting him on the earth I can see problem one and problem two then why can't I question like what's being presented to and why is it once you come into Islam you can't ask questions there's nobody

more in Islam than the carriers of the you know what I'm saying so I'm I'm now decided to kind of you know as I talk about Quran to kind of highlight that actually one of it and I I'm more convinced of this that before one of primary functions is to chain the believer how to think instead of glorifying [Music]

knowledge help and and every time the the narrow-minded want to look at these a okay yes we's piing things like even thean like how do you and this is a messenger this is a prophet of Allah saying that look how do you bring the dead [Music] body you know I do believe it's not that see faith is something

else you know I've got I just want to I want some contentment you know what I mean like so so yeah so It Isn't So this this thing of U but it's interesting you mentioned the thing about Adam the whole you see this whole thing it stirred a whole other discussion I think I don't know if I previously spoke to you about it but this whole thing of creation before Adam right now you know we've we other homings that we that are around Neals and things like this and all these other BS that have been found and stuff like you know I've discussed this with people I've said to people this there's actually a very interesting book

with by I think I mentioned it to you last time that it's by an Egyptian scholar who passed away after it's my father story of Genesis between and what he's saying is he's doing a distinction and I really like it between insan and and he says bash is the whole Harmony and insan the first insan is now the thing is and and then he brings like so when Allah says in un [Music] creating and using to

show a type of B but he has anyway other show this the point is I got I've got into several discussions about this with people I've said to people there's only two ways of looking at this the boms the findings all these things are here either we know that Adam Alam was enjy of his intelligent sophisticated he was I mean he you know Allah he was intelligent so either after him Humanity takes a massive dip and all these other you know these other varying Creations existing with slightly

different DNA whatever and then later on they reemerge with intelligence hundreds of thousands of years later once again all those things proceed as [Music] and really this is having no bearing in the sense that we're not saying Adam and not saying Adam is of would be a miracle but it would not say that the other creation before him defies our understanding in in any way and I tell you this's an interesting that the brings this verse he says that take that one but he brings the verse

that where Allah says that we created time lapses then we gave you formation he says that yes people traditionally just said that was creating but what was referring to and then their formation over time comes on the seene you know what was it argue

that I [Music] mean that's interesting actually be physical not be a agressive that's true Ian makes absolute sense but I'm just saying that the interesting thing isn't the discourse which is fascinating is very interesting the interesting thing is reaction I why woulds oh my God this was so I don't have a verdict on this either way to be

honest because people are so long telling