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Orthodoxy and how Islam spread
26 segments in 17 recordings · 2016 to 2023 · 0 verified · 18 checked positions · history/orthodoxy-and-how-islam-spread · Feed
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Click a year to jump to itLatest answer · 13 Feb 2023
13 Feb 2023video
LatestThe birth of orthodoxy: a nameless main body and the hadith project
Orthodoxy means belief deemed correct by those with power. For two centuries the main body of Muslims had no name and was marked out by involvement in hadith.
machine5 min 46 s0:00on YouTube
Earlier answers · 25 · newest first
2023 · 4
13 Feb 2023video
Apophatic definition: the early main body defined by what it was not
Early Muslims had no creed checklist: you belonged to the main body as long as you did not hold the positions of the known sects.
machine5 min 03 s5:46on YouTube
13 Feb 2023video
The created Quran controversy and the birth of a creedal checklist
In his research, orthodoxy began with the created-Quran controversy, which gave rise to the language of divine attributes and to growing creedal checklists.
machine8 min 21 s10:49on YouTube
13 Feb 2023video
Orthodoxy and power: adding to the checklist, ijma and cancel culture
Once creed became a checklist, those in power could keep adding to it, as with ijma; everyone acts from power, even when sincere.
machine7 min 07 s19:10on YouTube
13 Feb 2023video
Why orthodoxy took hold, and who wrote the checklist
Orthodoxy offered clarity, but its checklist was written by men from their own school and position, not by Allah and his Messenger.
machine3 min 59 s30:09on YouTube
2021 · 4
13 Apr 2021Monday Nights with Mufti Abu Layth
When should reason take priority over religious texts?
Reason always comes first, Mufti Abu Layth says, because every reading of scripture is already an interpretation; hadith dogmatism grew from Ibn Taymiyya's era and revived under colonialism.
machine9 min 07 s2:09:48on YouTube
14 Mar 2021video
Did Yasir Qadhi say that majority scholarly opinion rests on socio-political factors?
In the clip Qadhi says correct opinion is independent of the names and number of scholars and that dominant positions rest on socio-political factors such as the Ghaznavids, the Hanbalis of Baghdad and the Seljuks. Mufti Abu Layth says this is exactly what modernists say and contradicts Qadhi's appeal to the giants on the return of Jesus.
machine3 min 57 s1:01:57on YouTube
2 Mar 2021Monday Nights with Mufti Abu Layth
Does the majority of scholars holding a view make it right?
Mufti Abu Layth shows Qadhi saying that majority opinion rests on socio-political factors and that numbers do not make a view right, against his own appeal to the giants on the second coming.
machine4 min 09 s2:05:05on YouTube
16 Feb 2021Monday Nights with Mufti Abu Layth
Was Islam spread by the sword?
No: Islam spread by zeal, not the sword, he says; forced conversion rarely lasts, as British rule in India showed, though Islam is not pacifist.
machine3 min 46 s1:38:37on YouTube
2020 · 6
11 Dec 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
Why don't madrasas teach the Islamic philosophers and the Mu'tazila?
The guest says traditionalists value only a narrow sliver of Islam's diverse intellectual heritage, ignoring the philosophers, the early Qadariyya and Mu'tazila, Shia thinkers and modernists, and that he found answers on religion and science in Ibn Rushd.
machine3 min 58 s15:30on YouTube
11 Dec 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
Does traditional orthodoxy lead to extremism?
The guest says today's orthodoxy promotes reactionary conservatism that can mutate into groups like the Taliban and ISIS, and proposes reviving the philosophers, Mu'tazila and modernists; Mufti Abu Layth agrees some non-violent groups create a springboard for extremism.
machine3 min 11 s19:28on YouTube
22 Sep 2020Monday Nights with Mufti Abu Layth
What does Robert Hoyland's In God's Path say about how Islam spread?
Mufti Abu Layth recommends Hoyland's In God's Path as fair and well researched, and agrees that Islam's ability to integrate other peoples explains its rapid spread.
machine12 min 07 s1:24:50on YouTube
26 Jun 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
Does the guest think every hadith is fabricated?
The guest says not every hadith is evil, but truth is mixed with falsehood and even genuine sayings cannot be a source of religion, since the Quran makes God the only source of law and limits the messenger's duty to delivery.
machine3 min 54 s27:59on YouTube
19 Jun 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
What was the qira'a al-'amma, and why does Morocco recite a different reading?
The common reading of Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, Ali and the companions, al-qira'a al-'amma, is the mushaf we have, while the other readings stayed in scholars' books; Morocco reads Nafi' only because a third-century ruler imposed it on account of Imam Malik's preference. Mufti Abu Layth adds that the early generations were more secure in their faith than later, institutionalised Islam.
machine5 min 14 s48:32on YouTube
19 Jun 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
Where does the claim that the Quran is preserved to the very dot come from?
Mufti Abu Layth says the slogan that the Quran is preserved to the very dot is not traditional but a creed cemented in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when religious people entrenched themselves in fundamentalism against modernity and colonialism. Early Muslims were comfortable with a Quran that was preserved while allowing variation.
machine3 min 29 s1:21:11on YouTube
2019 · 4
16 Dec 2019Responding to Refutations
Was Islam spread by the sword?
Mufti Abu Layth says it is simply not true that Islam was spread by the sword, though there was surely compulsion in some places, and that it was wrong.
machine3 min 10 s2:33on YouTube
16 Dec 2019Responding to Refutations
Why did people in the past convert to new religions so readily?
People in the past were far more open to new gods than we are, adopting them in hope of good luck, so judging their conversions by today's identity-bound religion misleads.
machine5 min 04 s3:11on YouTube
16 Dec 2019Responding to Refutations
If Islam was not forced on people, why did so many convert?
Forced conversion was never the norm: Islam's power, trade and prestige drew people, and nobody could have policed the faith of a rural population. Some were surely forced, but not most.
machine4 min 14 s8:15on 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
2018 · 5
20 Apr 2018From the Mind of a Mufti
Was Abu Hanifa considered a deviant by the scholars of his time?
Many leading scholars of Abu Hanifa's time considered him misguided. His school rose to dominance because his student Abu Yusuf became chief judge and appointed only Hanafis, which Mufti Abu Layth says shows that power, not evidence, often decides which views prevail.
machine3 min 57 s0:00on YouTube
15 Apr 2018Debunking Myths On: Jinns, Magic, the Evil Eye, and Superstitions
Why great scholars accepted it: sectarian turf war with the Mu'tazila
Mufti Abu Layth argues that belief in magic, even on the Prophet, hardened as a sectarian reaction against the Mu'tazila, just as other issues hardened against Salafis or Shia.
machine10 min 12 s30:12on YouTube
9 Apr 2018The Voice of Reason in Islam
Why did Muslims become hostile to reason?
Mufti Abu Layth traces Muslim hostility to reason to the centuries-long sectarian conflict with the Mu'tazila, in which the mainstream answered the Mu'tazila's use of reason by disparaging reason itself and defending absurd narrations.
machine6 min 35 s49:33on YouTube
9 Apr 2018The Voice of Reason in Islam
How did the Golden Age backlash and the clergy contribute to Muslim hostility to reason?
The philosophy and reason promoted in the Golden Age provoked a reaction that dumbed reason down, and institutionalised clergy found 'who said the deen is supposed to make sense' a useful tool of control.
machine2 min 36 s56:08on YouTube
1 Apr 2018Islamic Eschatology
Does it matter that the second coming of Jesus is the majority opinion and Mufti Abu Layth's view a minority one?
If every detail of the second-coming hadith is a metaphor, Mufti Abu Layth asks why Jesus himself is not. Majority and minority opinions are decided later by power and politics, as Abu Hanifa's case shows: condemned as a deviant by his contemporaries, his school spread when Abu Yusuf appointed only Hanafi judges.
machine5 min 13 s5:13on YouTube
2017 · 1
11 Jan 2017Mothers of the Believers: The Wives of the Blessed Prophet ﷺ
Why is the report that Aisha was six and nine so much better known than the others?
The six-and-nine report became prominent as a by-product of hadith absolutism and the later sanctification of Bukhari and Muslim. Ordinary Muslims historically knew only that Aisha was young.
machine7 min 53 s1:27:41on YouTube
2016 · 1
15 Mar 2016video
Apostasy: execution as divine policy, tribal loyalty and treason in wartime
The speakers present the execution of apostates as tied to wartime treason and tribal loyalty in early Arab society rather than to belief alone, and say the Quran should be the primary reference in the discussion.
machine5 min 19 s0:06on YouTube