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Atheists and polemicists
27 segments in 14 recordings · 2018 to 2021 · 0 verified · 21 checked positions · dialogue/atheists-and-polemicists · Feed
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Click a year to jump to itLatest answer · 13 Apr 2021
13 Apr 2021Monday Nights with Mufti Abu Layth
LatestAre there answers to the hardest ethical questions about stories in the Quran?
Mufti Abu Layth says he has answered every hard question on his 2016 list, such as the killing of the boy in Moses' story, by research true to the text, and others can build on it.
machine7 min 49 s40:01on YouTube
Earlier answers · 26 · newest first
2021 · 2
16 Feb 2021Monday Nights with Mufti Abu Layth
Who are the Ibadis and what does the Mufti think of them?
Mufti Abu Layth says the Ibadis, an early and now peaceful offshoot of the Khawarij based in Oman, give a third tradition by which to cross-check claims, such as the Petra thesis.
machine6 min 22 s2:31:10on YouTube
2 Feb 2021Monday Nights with Mufti Abu Layth
Is rejecting embarrassing hadith about the Prophet just whitewashing history?
Mufti Abu Layth says the 'they would not invent it' argument is cogent at face value, but a fair critic must also ask who had a motive to fabricate a report.
machine6 min 11 s32:00on YouTube
2020 · 5
27 Oct 2020Monday Nights with Mufti Abu Layth
Would you debate Mohammed Hijab or talk with Richard Dawkins?
Mufti Abu Layth doubts Mohammed Hijab would come on Mind Trap, and says he would love to talk with Richard Dawkins, whom he admires.
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22 Sep 2020Monday Nights with Mufti Abu Layth
Are there enemies of Islam today?
Mufti Abu Layth says some people do hate Islam, but criticising or leaving Islam is not the same as hating it, and he will not engage those driven by hatred.
machine7 min 02 s58:35on YouTube
22 Sep 2020Monday Nights with Mufti Abu Layth
Did Patricia Crone accept that the Prophet Muhammad existed?
Mufti Abu Layth agrees with Patricia Crone that the Prophet's existence is certain, since sources document him from his last year or just after.
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24 Aug 2020Monday Nights with Mufti Abu Layth
How should Muslims react when someone tears or burns the Quran?
Mufti Abu Layth says tearing the Quran harms nothing in Islam and Muslims should never be enraged by it, while he condemns it and urges everyone to respect religious symbols.
machine8 min 13 s1:27:21on YouTube
12 Jan 2020On Current Events
How did Hamza Ali Abbasi do in his debate with Harris Sultan?
Mufti Abu Layth says Hamza Ali Abbasi showed genius-level intelligence and came out on top against Harris Sultan.
machine1 min 52 s0:00on YouTube
2019 · 18
17 Dec 2019From the Mind of a Mufti
Was pre-Islamic Makkah really a significant city?
Mufti Abu Layth thinks the revisionists have a point: Makkah was not a significant city or even a popular town, and its later image was an innocent reconstruction by Muslims rather than propaganda. He notes that Crone and Cook placed Makkah further north without settling on Petra.
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17 Dec 2019From the Mind of a Mufti
What is Dan Gibson's Petra theory and are his measurements trustworthy?
Gibson measured around 160 early mosque foundations and found the earliest pointing to Petra rather than Makkah. Mufti Abu Layth says the data are transparent and not falsified, though Gibson is somewhat mischievous, and that his explanation of the south-pointing North African mosques is ridiculous.
machine2 min 39 s2:36on YouTube
17 Dec 2019From the Mind of a Mufti
Who was Qusayy ibn Kilab and where was he raised?
Mufti proposes that Petra shaped early Islam through the Prophet's great-grandfather Qusayy, who was raised as a foreigner in Wadi al-Qura, which Mufti Abu Layth identifies with Petra. Qusayy's name means 'little stranger', and his longing for belonging drew him back to Makkah.
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17 Dec 2019From the Mind of a Mufti
Why do early Islamic books call the Ka'bah 'the Shami Ka'bah'?
Mufti Abu Layth suggests Qusayy, raised in Petra, rebuilt the Ka'bah and settled Quraysh around it in a Shami style, which is why early books call it the Shami Ka'bah. It does not mean the Ka'bah was in Sham.
machine3 min 55 s10:31on YouTube
17 Dec 2019From the Mind of a Mufti
Why did the earliest mosques face Petra instead of Makkah?
Most likely, he says, because Muslims inherited Nabataean devotion sites already aligned to Petra's constellation, so Gibson is right about the measurements but wrong that Petra was Makkah. Makkah was called Umm al-Qura, he suggests, after Petra's name, brought by Qusayy.
machine3 min 31 s18:21on YouTube
19 Sep 2019Responding to Refutations
Should Muslims build bridges with ex-Muslims?
Yes: he hopes Muslims can talk with ex-Muslims and critics as fellow human beings, as the early converts were won by human connection. He contrasts this with a preacher who refused any friendship with them.
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19 Sep 2019Responding to Refutations
How should Muslims respond to ex-Muslims who hate God?
Meet hatred with love: hating God does not harm God, so there is no need to abuse such people. Many ex-Muslims are hurting, and Muslims can stay their friends.
machine4 min 55 s19:20on YouTube
4 Aug 2019From the Mind of a Mufti
Can people be moral without religion?
Yes: humans know that killing is wrong without scripture, which came to reinforce it, and secular European societies have reached ethics without God. He strongly disagrees with deriding that.
machine5 min 44 s19:02on YouTube
25 Jul 2019Ponderings on the Holy Quran
Who transmitted the hadith 'whoever changes his religion, kill him', and does the Quran punish apostasy?
Mufti Abu Layth says the Quran is ambivalent about those who leave Islam and that the call to kill apostates is nonsense; the report 'whoever changes his religion, kill him' in Bukhari rests solely on Ikrima, a Khariji whom Imam Malik and Ibn Umar distrusted. He introduces Abdullah Sameer's post as the subject he will answer.
machine5 min 07 s1:18on YouTube
25 Jul 2019Ponderings on the Holy Quran
How should Muslims respond to an ex-Muslim who criticises the Quran?
Attack the argument, not the person: Mufti Abu Layth says a genuine seeker deserves respect, that the claim itself is false, and that Muslims who call the Prophet a mercy to the world must show it in how they respond.
machine1 min 19 s5:07on YouTube
25 Jul 2019Ponderings on the Holy Quran
Does 'those who have not menstruated' in Quran 65:4 refer to little girls?
No: Mufti Abu Layth says the phrase refers to women whose cycles are absent through illness or irregularity, as Abu Hayyan, Ibn Ashur, al-Samarqandi, Abu al-Su'ud and Ibn Atiyya read it. Al-Tha'labi records that the verse was revealed about a man who divorced his wife during her menses.
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25 Jul 2019Ponderings on the Holy Quran
Did classical scholars really say Quran 65:4 includes little girls?
Yes, some did: Mufti Abu Layth concedes that commentators such as Ibn Kathir and al-Qurtubi wrote that the phrase can include little girls, which he condemns as a mistake. He says their saying so is not the Quran saying so, and the evidence lies in how the passage opens.
machine2 min 37 s22:06on YouTube
25 Jul 2019Ponderings on the Holy Quran
Does the word 'women' in Surah al-Talaq rule out children?
Yes: the passage opens with nisa, women, a word never used of a six- or seven-year-old, just as boys are never called rijal, and the verses go on to envisage pregnancy, which nobody would expect of a child.
machine2 min 36 s24:43on YouTube
19 Jul 2019From the Mind of a Mufti
Was the first qibla really Petra, as Dan Gibson claims?
Mufti Abu Layth is not convinced that the first qibla was Petra: the statistical argument is a fallacy and Sunnis, Shia and Khawarij would never all have agreed on the Ka'bah. He still finds revisionist research compelling on some other matters and says Muslims should engage with it.
machine6 min 45 s0:00on YouTube
1 Mar 2019Ponderings on the Holy Quran
Who has studied the Sana'a palimpsest and what is the controversy about?
The Sana'a manuscript is a palimpsest studied by the Puins, Asma Hilali, Sadeghi and Goudarzi, and people online have used it to claim that the Quran Muslims have is not the original. Mufti Abu Layth sets out to answer that claim.
machine2 min 37 s5:10on YouTube
1 Mar 2019Ponderings on the Holy Quran
Does the Sana'a manuscript show that the Quran was changed?
The Sana'a manuscript and others such as the Birmingham manuscript date to the first century of Islam, when the Quran was the one text Muslims documented and taught everywhere. The Quran was too widespread and too distinctive in style to corrupt profitably, which is why fabrication targeted hadith instead.
machine5 min 15 s7:47on YouTube
1 Mar 2019Ponderings on the Holy Quran
Does the Sana'a manuscript prove the Quran evolved over time?
The discrepancies in the Sana'a text are petty changes of pronouns and dropped words that serve no purpose, so they cannot be a deliberate evolution of the Quran, which nobody would have risked his life for. They are most likely a writer's mistaken notes.
machine3 min 56 s28:39on YouTube
1 Mar 2019Ponderings on the Holy Quran
Does the Sana'a manuscript support or undermine the Muslim account of the Quran's history?
The Sana'a find confirms the traditional account: a first-century Quran, companions who sometimes erred as the hadith say, and Uthman's standardisation of one reading. The largest discrepancy is a dropped word that exists elsewhere in the Quran.
machine4 min 08 s32:35on YouTube
2018 · 1
17 Sep 2018On the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ
Was the Prophet Muhammad poisoned, and did he die from it?
No: Mufti Abu Layth says the Prophet did not die of poisoning. The report in Bukhari that he felt the poison cutting his aorta in his final illness is, in his view, a fabricated story that contradicts itself and fails on its chain.
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