 I would like to thank you all for coming out this evening at MCC and tomorrow as well. We have Dr. Waleed Mus'ad who actually is a dear friend of mine and who is just someone who just asked me a question, you know, are you from, asked me about certain time and I said, yeah, actually, you're right about that time and that's actually what I met Waleed. So this is a 20 plus years and we've known each other and I think about this hadith al-marwa al-deen, al-khalili, al-yandr al-alaman al-khalil, that a person is upon the Deen of his companion and so look to the ones that you take companionship with and I can honestly say that I did, I do and insha'Allah I will continue to benefit, masha'Allah, from Dr. Waleed Mus'ad. So currently he is serving as the director of Muslim Student Life at Lehi University. He is a scholar of the Islamic tradition. He received his PhD from University of Exeter in the UK in Arab and Islamic studies and was also classically trained in Azha University in Cairo, Egypt. He is also a visiting professor at the Bayan-Klamat College of Theology and he has traveled extensively throughout the Muslim world as well as Europe and the Far East delivering lectures on various topics of interest including Muslims as minorities, interfaith understanding and the importance of purification and spirituality in addressing the human condition. So al-hamdulillah wa-l-tawfiqa wa-bawah subhanahu wa-ta'ala. We welcome, masha'Allah, our esteemed guest and beloved brother and teacher Dr. Waleed Mus'ad. As-salamu alaikum. Wa-bawah al-sawaat wa-dawah al-taslimat. So first I'd like to thank the U.N.C.C. and C.Dawood for producing and for inviting us to deliver a short introduction tonight and hopefully we will begin with Dr. Waleed Mus'ad the seminar tomorrow and this particular seminar I developed perhaps four or five years ago and I had intended with it to equip the student of knowledge and also the person who wants to sort of get a deeper understanding about the way that we practice this then and the matter that we learn it and the matter that it was transmitted and in the matter that we articulated the way that we talk about it because I think it's not really much of an exaggeration of what you say that over the past several decades we have experienced a number of crises went after the next political crises, economic crises obviously many of us have come from countries that were affected by war, affected by colonialism and the Muslim institutions that were in these places while they may still be standing today as institutions they were greatly affected by what has gone on over the past several decades and it's unfortunate that for you know this morning we're greeted with news from Egypt that this despicable crime was carried out and more likely than not in the name of Islam what people claim to be not just Muslim but somehow furthering the cause of what they think to be Islam by slogering people on the cream jomah in a masjid that has nothing to do with anything so there's many questions that can be raised one of them we will hide if we get to this point and how is it that we are reading the same Qur'an to my knowledge there's no Qilaf there's no difference of opinion even between Sunni and Shira or the other different sects about the masjid of Qur'an about the text of the Qur'an everyone is agreed about that. Sunni Muslims are agreed about the hadith in as much as we respect the hadith companions of al-Bukhari and muslim, Abu Dawood, al-Tirmidhi, al-Nisa'i, al-Namaja, al-Mu'ata, al-Malik, so forth so how is it then that the sources of what we call the primary sources where we learn our Islam from are the same and we'll agree about it but somehow we are coming with vastly different conclusions about what what it says what it means and how to go about practicing it so we know definitely that the Deen of Islam as taught by the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ is something that was not just meant for the particular people of his time of 7th century Arabia nor was it meant only for Arabs or people who speak the Arabic language nor was it meant only for the pre-modern era and somehow in modernity it's now become irrelevant and passe and antiquity so as believers we believe in all those things but yet I think we often struggle to articulate why we believe in all those things and when confronted with certain pointed arguments and questions we might be at a loss for words to to to provide an answer I think that would be applicable to the situation that we find ourselves in and I believe the method by which we can go about not just practicing the Deen in a more enlightened way but also being firmly grounded in the Deen and firmly grounded in the particular circumstances that we all face and we may think that Islam or the articulation of Islam how it was taught and transmitted it's kind of been the same for the past 13950 years and only in the last 100 years or so or 50 years or so has it changed and that's actually not the case it has been undergoing a consistent what you would call renewal based upon the Hadith of the Prophet SAW that every 100 years or so Allah He will send someone who will renew every century every 100 years or so the Deen for people so it's not the Deen itself that needs to be renewed right here we have to understand it metaphorically that it is the practice and transmission and learning and the human element of the Deen that needs renewal and every generation of Muslims have recognized this and they have taken steps to do it and it began very early on you know it's not something as I said that happened in the past 50 years but even from the time of the Sahaba right they were hesitant to do things and institute things that the Prophet SAW did not directly ask them to do but nevertheless they realized there was a need so perhaps the first example of that would be the compilation of the Quran so during the time of the Prophet SAW many of the Sahaba had the Quran memorized and they actually only probably a few of the Sahaba actually kind of had their own personal mushaf some of the senior companions like say the Ali and the Missarud say the Allah but the best majority of them either had it memorized or they had fragments of it and it was not there was not what we would call an authorized copy that was distributed to everybody like we have today and so during the Fidaf of Abu Bakr 60, Radiullah Rahim in one of the battles of Al-Augamallah he noticed that 70 of the Khufl, 70 of the memorizers of the Quran were martyred and he began to recognize that purely relying on the human element to preserve the text of the Quran why are you talking about the understanding of it but the very text of the Quran might be in parallel so he decided that we need to have almost half we need to have an authorized copy and he first went to Umar Radiullah and said I think we need to do this and Umar was hesitant he said Prophet SAW didn't do that in an institute this time the thing that you're talking about what was Abu Bakr's response by Allah it is good it is needed right and that is one of the principles of the deen if something is good and it serves the interest of the umma and it's not contravening the sharia then that's something that is after discretion of the muslims to do and that's what they did and Abu Bakr Siddit assigned some of the senior companions to do it people like Zaid Mithabit was assigned to do that you have to give me an authorized and so this was done initially during the time of Abu Bakr Siddit it was done a second time in the time of Sayyidina Ahmed ibn Affan so they recognized that there had to be some documentation it wasn't just in the Quran it was not until the time of Umar ibn Abdul Aziz we're talking some hundred plus years after the Hijrah where Umar ibn Abdul Aziz decided the hadith too needs to be documented needs to be compiled because you have to understand that the Arabs in the ribbon peninsula at the time one of the things that was unique about them and that separated them from the other nations like the Persians and the Byzantines of Europe was that they had a very sophisticated oral tradition and they would memorize the Anseb of their camels they would memorize the the lineages of the camels that they have and they'd know a five six seven eight generations back right but and they'd commit this to memory and they'd also commit the poetry of some of the great poets right and in the annual grand market festival that was called Suq Al Qaq that would happen in Mecca yearly and this was something even before Islam amongst the things that they would sell besides housewares and Tupperware i'm just giving a simile they would also have a sort of poetry festival poetry competition where the greatest poets from around the peninsula would come and kind of share their poetry and it even got to the extent that seven of these particular Qasa'il or Odds were referred to as the seven Mu'allaqat the seven seven hanging Odds because they would hang them it was reportedly they would hang them from the the the walls of the Ka'a right amongst them was the Odds of Ibn al-Qaisha, Al-Abd al-Kulthum and Al-Labid al-Mawbiya, Al-Labid became Muslim so all of these you know these seven Odds were memorized so they had a very sophisticated culture in that it was a very oral tradition and very few very few of the Meccans especially and more so of the people of Yathur could read and write some of the Meccans could read and write because they did so for trade but as a rule most people were not literate in the sense they could read and write but they had this very high proficiency in the oral tradition and so that was kind of a cradle or a mehd for the Quran to be received in the Arabian Peninsula and to be preserved in that way because the other umam the other nations didn't have these abilities and of course Sayyidullah al-Lawbiya, Al-Lawbiya, Allah in Fasirah he says as much he said one of the secrets of why the Islam came to the Arabian Peninsula initially and not somewhere else amongst the reasons that they didn't have any theological baggage like the other places but also that they had this highly sophisticated oral culture so even though it was a highly sophisticated oral culture there was a realization that um that would not suffice forever so there had to be documentation so the documenting of the hadith and compiling of it began earnestly in the time of Umar ibn Abdulaziz often referred to as the fifth righteous caliph even though he's from the Umeya who came many years after the last caliph either Sayyid al-Ali or his son Sayyid al-Hassan amongst Khulafah al-Roshidin so as a result these developments took place in not just the the way that the deen was transmitted but also in the way that was articulated right many of the ulum the sciences began to develop during the time of the sahaba there was no such thing as Arabic grammar or any of these other sciences of the Arabic language you know if you told one of the they would have thought what are you talking about talking nonsense this is very grammatical terms that have a specific meaning but back then they were used because they knew the language naturally right it was what they call this something that you know like we speak English naturally without perhaps studying the grammar of it that they had this to the umf degree and they didn't have a need to document these things but the need came later and reportedly it was Sayyid al-Ali we said to Abu Asad al-Nu'ali one of the tabi'in he said uh right right like this that is what happened and say that the word or the part of speech is either an ism or noun or a verb or a preposition and this is how how it began and then these sizes further developed right until a non-Arab right someone whose mother tongue was not Arabic language but nevertheless was referred to as the grammarian and his book was referred to as a the book this of course was Sivaway and Sivaway was a Persian and Sivaway is generally acknowledged as being the greatest if not one of the greatest grammarians of this umma but yet he was a Persian when he came from the Persian Empire his parents his lineage and perhaps the reason that he was so good at it is because he saw that it was in need he didn't have the Arabic now language naturally for example like this teacher Khalid al-Ahmad al-Farahid who was his teacher was an Arab but he was the one row and Qidab Khalid al-Ahmad didn't write a book of Nahul like Sivaway but Sivaway is the one who wrote it and he would say why because there was a need how were the Persians supposed to know the Arabic language and don't have to speak it correctly and so forth unless it was documented and it was um you know articulated in a way so that people for the generations coming after them would understand the reason I'm saying all of this now is because one of the things that you know we often hear maybe not so much but it used to be quite ubiquitous is that we just need to follow Quran and Sunnah and you know we don't need anything else and even though that sounds reasonable right the Prophets who are sitting there have left for you that which if you hold on instead fastly you will not be a stray after me the Quran and the Sunnah that will allow you so not the Sunnah or Sunnah right in another way of term and that sounds reasonable that seems to be what we're saying but how do you actually know about doing that one more I said in the very beginning if you have just the text the Quran and the Hadith and you don't have a human element right that is interpreting it and transmitting and articulating for you there is nothing to prevent you from going astray and you might say oh slow down isn't isn't the Hadith clear yes talk to me come I left for you you right come here there's a human element to it what is the need for this the need for this is history there was a group that appeared at the beginning of some of these Qulafah and they were later referred to as the Khawarij those who seceded those who left the ummah those who left the body of muslims and one of the things about them the Prophet S.A.W. described them right and he said you will be literally your prayer next to their prayer right and your recitation of the Quran with their recitation of their Quran but their recitation of the Quran does that go beyond your throats it's only the right only outwardly they appear to be very pious but inwardly they don't have an understanding and one of the distinguishing features about the khawarij is that they did not have a single sahabi amongst them in other words they didn't have a single person who had seen Rasulullah S.A.W. in other words they did not have Wairith Muhammad they didn't have someone who had seen the Prophet S.A.W. who imbibed his sunnah who was an embodiment of the local legacy of the Prophet S.A.W. they didn't have that so when they read the Quran how did they read the Quran and when they heard about the hadith how did they read the hadith how was to explain to people when the man with the Prophet S.A.W. described he said I am the city of knowledge and Ali is its door said Ali he's on the minbar he's giving the khubba and they heckle him and they stand up and they say right they recite a verse of the Quran in the hope that the judgment the ruling is not for Allah S.A.W. and so they declared him to be a non-Muslim a kathir because he agreed to adjudicate the dispute that he had between himself and one of his provincial governors namely Muawwain Nabi Sufiyan so since he agreed to adjudicate that right and and and try to spare the blood of Muslims and reach an agreement they called him a kathir these were the khawwans they're not that far removed from the time of the Prophet S.A.W. so it's not enough just to have the text of the Quran or just have the text of the hadith you also need to have the other thing that is transmitted along with it which is the way to go about approaching them the way to go about learning them the way to go about transmitting them and each one of these things we have what's called a senate this is a transmitted religion so that means it's dependent upon the human beings who come before us and the ones who come before them for us to receive it faithfully right and Abdullah Nubarak one of the great devein he said very early on in it's not been a deem and without it's not then anyone would say anything right but you have to have Islam and he also said someone who is not using a snack right and said it means to lean on something so someone was not leaning on the human legacy before and he said it's like the person who tries to get up to the second floor but tries to climb the building and doesn't use the stairs so we have a set of stairs there is a way to go about doing it if you go to to and you say to him sheikh i want to learn Quran he might ask you type which kebab do you want to read hafsa al-asim to read warchh al-nafah talool al-nafah he has found 14 other ones he can offer you right and you might be like no what are you talking about i want Quran what is this hafsa al-asim whose hafs i want the Quran of the prophets the Quran of Allah revealed who is this person hafs and who is this other guy hafsim and who is this guy warchh and who is this other guy nafah what are you talking about just give me the Quran he will tell you that there's no Quran for you because the only way you're going to receive the Quran is by one of these kanatical recitations right one of the seven kanatical recitations or one of the ten and there are certain conditions to be a kanatical recitation of the Quran but you might say the mushaf that i have in the masjid doesn't say anything like that none are open to the back open the king fahd medina printing first mushaf and look towards the back and you'll see a list of names and you also see the name of the qiraah and it will say it's approved by these people so what authorizes the qiraah is not because it was printed at the king fahd printing complex in medina what authorizes the qiraah is the names of those people because those people have what's called an ijaza in other words they took from n from someone before them and someone before them someone before them i think the highest ijaza in the world that was 28 people between yourself and the prophets of our senate so they can name those 28 people their ijaza will have those 28 people between them and the prophets of our senate that's what makes them for n authorized not the mushaf they authorized the mushaf they authorized the written version but what really authorized it that they have the senate the ijaza going back to it so our dean there's a very vital essential important human element to it if you go to uh a sheikh can ask him okay i want to learn how to pray i want to learn how to fast i want to learn how to make a case account he might ask you which madham would you like to learn to read uh medic and the sheikh and no no i want i want the prophets way i don't want what is this who's these people you're talking about who's medic the sheikh and the one who's that well if you want to learn it's one of those four it's not another way for you it's those four there's no no door for you why this is the method by which the human element of la asparta has chosen to preserve the way that we practice the dean in terms of in terms of the deeds of those who are held morally and ethically responsible by la asparta why those four there's historical reasons but above and beyond all of that Allah chose these four and when we talk about these four we're not talking about one man we're talking about an institution we're talking about a madrasa right we're talking about hundreds of thousands of people who followed behind them who were constantly re-editing and we're what we call tahrir and tawtiha and tasheer right they were looking at it and fine-tuning it until we get to the point where this is what this is what has been established for the umma for the community so i don't want to make a claim that somehow you're going to learn from another way outside of those four madahm at least from the Sunni perspective it's not possible now i take from the Quran and Sunni directly there's no take from the Quran and Sunni unless you're a mustahd iman you're in the caliber of madiq or shafiq and these people you have to follow one of those why do i have to follow one of those because Allah tells us we have to follow the Quran and Sunni if you don't have the tools to do it by yourself then it becomes obligatory upon you to follow a method by which you can acquire it so i don't want to have this beautiful rule that says that which can only be obtained by something that is obligatory that thing is also obligatory so my goal is to know how to pray how to fast how to pay this again and then the way that's feasible before me is one of the four schools and that's the way that's feasible then there's no other way and i promise you uh shaykh al qawthari actually will understand about this he said those people who think that they're gonna find another way to find the four schools then that's actually a road towards ilhad that is a road actually towards heresy going outside of the deed because once you allow people once we say that it's okay any which way that you want that's no that's no longer authentic that's no longer rationality that's no longer calm and spirituality then it becomes ego and nefs and if you follow your ego is going to take you to the worst place and the worst place is what to be even outside of the so Allah SWT has preserved the deed in this way whether it's in terms of the language the Arabic language by which we understand the Quran and Sunnah whether it's by the four schools of law by the way by which we understand um how to practice the deed whether it's by one of the kebab at by which the Quran was preserved and then there's a myriad of other things the the science of the surah for example looks at how do we interpret the Quran right we have people running around today who are saying outlandish things and interpreting the verses of the Quran in outlandish ways and they may have those three letters after their name phd but that doesn't mean that they have an authority by which to interpret the verses in that particular way right some of them try to cause some confusion amongst muslims and they said your besmala that you recite it's actually an affirmation of the trinity that the christians believe me because when you say Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim in the Arabic language you can have what's called and wow the conjunction between them could be omitted so it's like saying Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim and linguistically speaking that's not impossible because you could say jaya zayn al-amr al-ahmad zayn al-ahmad keen and you could say jaya zayn al-amr al-ahmad and it has the same meaning it's it's it's kind of it's feasible in the language but then why would we not interpret the verse in that particular way well there's another very important concept right this concept of the jama'a of consensus so even though the verse itself may have a probabilistic meaning if however the umma has agreed wala tashtama'a umma tihal al-talil the umma has agreed this is the meaning of it then it's not another meaning right and there are people who are actively working to destroy this consensus and they won't call it consensus they'll call it patriarchy right they'll call it authoritarianism they'll call all different sorts of words except the word that we know it by which is consensus and you know many of our young people who are attending universities and otherwise they are being bombarded by these type of of things that can cause doubt and cause disillusionment and disenfranchisement within the understanding of that so it's important that it for the particular time the circumstances that we're facing now that we're well equipped that we understand not just the dean says one two three but why does it say it this way and how does it say it this way so you know understanding that you know the bedrock foundation of the he of the way that things are articulated why form of that hip why did we develop a theology right why was this thing called in the cadet or this thing of dialectic dialect discourse why were some of the argument of the muslims started to talk about you know the existence of god and the existence of his attributes and his is his name the same as his essence and his his essence the same as existence or as the two different things all of these things were not never talked about during the time of the sahab they were not an issue they were not an issue however circumstances changed and different people began asking these questions and just to tell them well that's just the way it is no longer suffice so you know one of the things that we should take to heart when our own children are grandchildren or friends they start asking questions it no longer suffices for us to say well that's just the way it is that does not satisfy the curiosity it does not satisfy the doubt so we should be at a level of understanding of the dean where we can articulate well this is why the way that it is and that particular concept that we're talking about the thing that they call patriarchy you know there's a historical narrative behind that of where that came from and how that developed and it's completely outside of our particular historical narrative we never had a problem with gender within the islamic understanding that's something that's been inherited from european european civilization and post reformation european civilization one two three right we should be able to at least identify these things because if we're not able to do that then we run the danger of actually misinterpreting much of the dean and attributing things to it that are not from it so what i hope to do inshallah tomorrow in a very short seminar is kind of go over a lot of these conceptual frameworks it sounds a little technical academic it is a little bit on that side but i think we should not be afraid to kind of delve into these type of issues especially you know when when there are people working on very sophisticated levels and have lots of money behind them in the writing books and the putting out articles and our children who go to university are reading these articles and they're being confronted by it and they're going to come home and ask all sorts of questions and wonder why is it this way when it seems like this is the the status quo society this is what so this is what people are saying it should be so why is our dean so different and why is it seemed to always confront you know the status quo and what people accept to be you know issues of freedom and of liberty and understanding and so forth you know and i think we have to be able to to look at our tradition and not just treat it as some sort of ossified inherited thing that we just take for granted and just take the word for it but actually be able to have a critical understanding of it and this is what our progress says we're able to do you know the great imam al-ghazani who's referred to as rujat al-islam the proof of islam because he was able to deal with the the the people who were causing doubt during his particular talk and he read everything that they wrote and he memorized their arguments and then he was able to counter their arguments by using the same terms by using their own words more or less against them and so this is always going to be relevant and there's always going to be mushaq iqeen there's always going to be people who are going to cause doubt as long as the devil and his minions are around then there's always going to be people who are going to try to pull you away from the stand by different ways and different means so um i just wanted to give kind of a short introduction uh hopefully some of you will not be scared off and come back tomorrow to uh to share some of that even though i don't know