Ep 245. - The Scholars who Failed Gaza with Dr Farah El-Sharif
The genocide in Gaza is one that is unparalleled in Muslim history, two million people are being annihilated in the most systematic way, with no escape. On one side stands the fascistic zionist entity and on the other a wall of compliant, tepid, Muslim rulers who have expended zero political capital to help their beleaguered brethren. Instead they feed their imperial north star, the United States, wishing to usher this away so they can continue as usual. A pitiful existence, in a region where Israel looks to undermine any whiff of independence.
But is there a greater problem than the Arab rulers? If the Egyptian army guard the gates of Rafah, where are the Muslim people to hold them to account? If the Islamic faith was founded upon principles of calling out the good and forbidding the evil, then why do so many of us live lives that fail to internalise this disaster, let alone move to hold the conspirators to account. What of the Muslim scholars, our historical north star? How is it that so many of them continue to preach a detachment that preserves their proximity to thrones and funds. Is there a problem with our Islam. This is the question we look at with Dr Farah El-Sharif.
You can find Dr Farah El-Sharif here:
IG: https://www.instagram.com/farah.elsharif/?hl=en Substack: https://sermonsatcourt.substack.com
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Transcript - This is an automated transcript and may not reflect the actual conversation
Introduction
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Scholars are meant to be inheritors of the prophets. Today, so many of them sedate the ummah with a version of Islam
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that strips it of its essential ethical message with scholars asking the people of Gaza to suffer in silence. I don't
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know how people make excuses for themselves after this river of blood. The cries and the calls of the women and
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children and fathers who are literally dropping dead on the streets because fatwas and forums and interfaith
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councils that gave kind of theological and political rubber stamping for this atrocity you know suffer in silence. If
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only you just sit quietly and don't do anything about your oppression or your suffering then maybe the world will see
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you as human beings. And that is the betrayal of Islam. When you are giving a blind cover and a theological cover to
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the tyrant. My guest this week is the brilliant Dr. Farah al- Sharif, a scholar of Islamic
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intellectual history. She earned her PhD from Harvard studying West African Islamic traditions and served as
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Stanford's Abbasi programs associate director. Let's give some names to these
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scholars who are sedating the Muslim um who are these people we're talking about.
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[Music] Dr. Farah al Sharif asalamu allaykumah
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and welcome to the thinking muslim. It's great to be here. Well affair for joining us here. We've
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got a very very important conversation today in the backdrop with the backdrop of a famine in Gaza and horrendous
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crimes against our Muslim Ummah. Now I think if you don't mind me saying you're
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a Palestinian with hijazi roots. uh from a very well-renowned scholarly family.
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Your great uncle uh was wazir uh from Palestine uh who was imprisoned actually
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for his anti-ionist activism. Uh you've studied Islam in Morocco, Sagal, Jordan
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and Egypt. So in many ways um you have a very good idea of of scholarship in
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Islam and and and of the sort of the breath of Islamic scholarship in the modern contemporary age and and in the
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past. Um why do you argue that scholarship has failed this um over
Why scholarship failed?
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Gaza? Thank you so much uh brother Muhammad. It's an honor and a pleasure to be with
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you today um to discuss this painful uh but necessary topic. Um when I think of
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that question, I think immediately of the hadith of our beloved prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam who
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said um shall I tell you the thing that I fear for you more than the antichrist and the djal and in these times and he
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said three times the misguiding scholars the misguiding scholars the misguiding scholars or in general can mean leaders
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or scholars and and so it doesn't take um you know a jurist or a genius to see
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that there is um a real lapse in leadership in Muslim leadership in thought and in rising up to the moment
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of of of this um catastrophic um phase of of of humanity and of our
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ummah. Um and I I can't think uh of a better kind of anecdote to invoke than
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from Gaza from the heart of Gaza itself uh where a respected scholar Dr. Abu
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Shambla came out in a in a scathing uh video and and he said, "Oh, oh high and
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mighty scholars of our um oh scholars of Al Azar, oh Muis, oh jurists, please uh
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tell us, enlighten us. Uh we don't want your armies. We don't want your food. We don't want your bread. We don't want anything from you." Uh pray tell how did
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the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam tie uh the rock on his stomach when he he was hungry. Was the rock big was the
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rock small? uh did he put it up or down? So this was kind of a scathing indictment on the kind of the dry and
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harsh legalism um that is kind of really removed from the heart of sorrow and
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suffering and from the scale of death and destruction that our brothers and sisters are facing kind of uh on their
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own in this in this slaughterhouse uh by on the by the hands of um the Zionist
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state. So if if we are to think about ourselves as Muslims today, what does
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that mean? Uh is is the Quran just you know a nice accessory for us on our
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shelves? Um and Allah warns us that you you will leave you will leave the Quran.
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You will desert it. But it's meant to be a living revelation. And I think if we really read it with this with these
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times with these treacherous times in mind, we will see that Allah himself is also reprimanding us. It's not just the
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people of that are saying, "What's the matter with you? What is wrong with you, oh um what is wrong with you, our
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leaders?" Allah himself says, "What is the matter with you?" And he uses this
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this uh this verse of malikum in multiple instances, namely,
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what is the matter with you that you don't help each other? That you don't come to the aid of one another. He also
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says, he says twice, "What is the matter with you? How
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do you judge or how do you think or not think? Every Muslim should be a thinking Muslim." And yet this lapse of of of
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rhetoric and judgment is just atrocious. And then Allah also says
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in the instance where Ibraim spoke to the idols and say, "Why aren't you speaking? Where aren't we similar to
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idols? Deaf, dumb, and mute. We are not able to come together and have a united word against injustice. And then
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what is the matter with you when you are called to struggle in the way of Allah? You become heavy in your step. I.e. you
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become lazy and fearful. And then lastly,
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what is the matter with you that you don't give Allah his true um stature and
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place in your hearts? True tawa. Uh that is clearly that is clearly speaking to us in our present moment.
Empty rituals
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There seems to be a problem with modern contemporary scholarship. Um, in one of
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your Substack articles, you say that these scholars are deforming Islam by
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turning it into empty rituals devoid of ethics. Uh, what do you mean by that
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empty rituals devoid of ethics? Yeah. So, in a sense, if you think about it, why is the bani is mentioned so
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frequently in the Quran? Why is Sa Musa mentioned what around 136 times? It's
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because it's supposed to be a mirror for us uh of these people, these bygone people of the book and how they let
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their revelation down, how they made it into kind of um just a kind of a a a
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balm or a salve to feel good about themselves to say, "Oh, look, I prayed five times a day. I wear hijab. I go to
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the masid. I must be such a good person." And pat yourself on the back. But Islam in essence didn't come to make
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you feel good. in its essence came to just by de facto by internalizing
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realhed. It came as a revolutionary force. It didn't say the prophet sallallaihi wasallam didn't come to the
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Quraysh and keep the peace and you know let let things as they are just by
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virtue of coming with a final revelation a lot was upended and people uh had to
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kind of release themselves from the yoke of fear and from attachment to physical and spiritual idols and and and apparent
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and hidden polytheism shik in order to actually walk the walk and talk the talk
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of what it means to be a Muhammad bearer um what it means to be a walking Quran.
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That is is something that looks and and breathes um something that
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is uh kind of dis unsettling for tyrants. Uh a true Muslim doesn't make
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tyrants feel good around him or her. So what when I'm saying that I what I'm seeing unfortunately and this is not
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true about all scholars but by and large we have come to a point where most of
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our scholars have seeded their authority in service of the powerful in service of
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unchecked state rogue tyranny. Um they they failed us because they they are unable to to um talk to the heart of
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this suffering to speak about surveillance to speak about uh drones to speak about uh concentration camps to
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speak about the ongoing holocaust conditions to speak about prisoners of of conscience and just of of prisoners
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of um political prisoners in the Muslim world. And instead they want us to focus
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on uh you know uh like uh wrote theological questions or you know how do
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we put our hand in prayer and uh what do we do if you know certain fatawa that
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kind of only serve to um lull and dull us in our approach to Islam. uh and this
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I think is a kind of a secular approach to Islam because at the end of the day state powers are very interested in
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producing an Islam that is sedated like that that gives you the illusion that
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you know you you are going against the grain you are going against the status quo you are religious you're good so
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that must mean that you're on the right path but often times um these things are
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illusurary and we need to be careful of the hidden idols that may not look like
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in in the Jahalia era. But there's something to be said about this neopagan
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neojahalia era that we are living in now. Today over 2 billion people lack access
Donate to Baitulmaal
9:54
to safe drinking water. Their daily reality means walking miles for a basic life necessity water.
10:03
With polluted waters, every sip carries risks of chalera, dysentery, and
10:08
typhoid. Diseases that claim millions of lives every year.
10:14
You can change this reality by sponsoring life-saving water wells in places like Pakistan,
10:20
filling water trucks in places like Gaza, or distributing water bottles in times of crisis.
10:27
The prophet Muhammad peace be upon him said, "Giving water to drink is the best of charities.
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Follow in his footsteps and give the gift of clean water today.
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Turn your compassion into hope." In answer to that question, you use the
Islam revolutionary force?
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term Islam is a revolutionary force. I mean, substantiate that because there may be some Muslims out there who say,
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"Well, wait a minute. That's that sounds very Marxist to me. Uh what do you mean by it's a revolutionary force?
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Yeah. So revolution u is is uh it raises alarm bells for many people because it's
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normally associated with socialist communist or Marxist thought. But if we look at the Quran itself,
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let's go back to first principles, right? Every prophet uh was tested with
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with an enemy. Every prophet was tested with injustice. Uh Sna Ibraim uh was an iconoclast. Um,
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say Musa faced Pharaoh uh and had to really confront his tyranny and and
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Pharaoh ironically is very similar to what Israel is doing. Their their canonical enemy um they need to just
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look in the mirror and see that you know killing of children and uh basically spreading and sowing um bloodshed and
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not seeing any faults and and thinking themselves as better than everybody else. Uh subhan Allah. And so the
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prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam had to face the um the persecution and the hurt of the nearest
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and dearest to him, his tribe, the Quraysh. Um and so I'm not taking this
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uh from you know any postcolonial um texts or anything like that although there is something to be learned from
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from that corpus. But I think there's an anxiety in in the Muslim mind today in
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how to approach injustice and they are afraid that if they speak about injustice that they might fall into a
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woke or impious Marxist materialist traps. But what I'm saying is you needn't look other than the prophetic
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tradition itself and the Quran itself to see them to see them both as a manifesto
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against fear because really what keeps us from
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uh confronting these idols from confronting Pharaoh is that we are um beholdened by worldly attachments and
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fears and cowardice. And I think the the fear is mentioned about 124 times in the
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Quran. So Allah knows this about us. Allah knows that humanity is susceptible
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uh to to feeling afraid of creation. Right? Even Allah says to Moses
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go to Pharaoh. Don't be afraid. I am with you. So it fear in and of itself is
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not a bad thing. It's a human trait. But when we recognize that yes there is a fear but we defer that fear to Allah for
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him to release uh it from our state because that might um open us up to
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being more afraid of creation than the creator himself and that is not a spiritual state we
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would want to meet um our Lord with I would imagine that's right I mean I I've come across
Is it our fault?
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um a number of scholars various scholars of of different schools of thought for and background who pack out conference
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halls even though there is a a genocide taking place in Gaza and there's never a mention of Gaza. Maybe in dua they will
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make some reference to Gaza but Gaza is far from their minds and and as you said they talk about this empty version of
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spirituality but the isn't the full hours. I mean we sit in those halls we
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pay 20 $30 sometimes even more to to listen to these preachers. Uh we give
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them sucker for for what they say. Um, is it really the problem that an ummah problem if we had uh any sense of ethics
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and principles would be demanding uh this this uh from our scholars but we're
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not. No, no, we're not. And I I call this u kind of dopamine Islam or spiritual
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crack. uh we flock to these conferences maybe to to feel good, you know, that we
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get that hit, you know, we feel spiritually uplifted for a little bit, then we go home and then we have no real
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anchoring and something greater and something sustainable and in in a in a
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lived Quranic and prophetic worldview. Um, and it really mimics kind of the megaurch uh style of Christianity. Um
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and and I fault really uh western Muslims in specific because they're the ones that have so much privilege. They
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are drowning mashallah in in in a lot of access and their ceiling for speech is
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much higher than um most people in the Muslim world and yet they are all
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scrambling to update to their latest Tesla or go to the better private school
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and and so this kind of prosperity Islam um and as long as you know we donate to this donate to that that's enough or
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maybe do some boycotting that's enough but with great privilege comes great responsibility and what is the use of
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all our access um our degrees if we're not able to be the voice for our
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brethren in places like Sudan, Yemen, Somalia, uh Syria, etc.
Consequences of speaking
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I mean that's that's very interesting. I want to come back to the scholars, but I I think this mindset probably is is
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important to to scrutinize. Um you've said something there. I wonder whether you're making a legalistic point in a
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way because you know we have those privileges in the west and we can speak out and of course those Muslims under
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Arab tyrannies and Muslim governments tend to not have that privilege. Are you arguing that on we have a greater
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responsibility because we can speak and the fear of of
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the consequences of speaking is is not so great as those in the Muslim world.
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You know, brother, I uh when you were saying that, I immediately uh thought of
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um a beautiful Shahid from Gaza. His name is uh brother Ahmed Abuse. Um and
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he before he passed, he put out a video, a message, and I think it was directed
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to um Muslims in the whole world, but specifically in the west who are really
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like drowning in privilege. And he said, um you are guilty of the 8 to3 trap. And
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what is the 8 to3 trap? He was referring to where it says
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if say if your uh parents, your children, your uh siblings, your
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spouses, your wealth, your your your tribe are more beloved to you and these are eight are more beloved to you than
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Allah and his messenger. So uh wait until Allah comes with his um with his
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command. Meaning what use are all these things that you are vying for? You are
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vying for you know upward mobility and to be seen and to gain the favor of this boss or this ruler and this climbing up
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the corporate ladder and all the at the end of the day what will you come up with? This is all and I'm not saying
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that we should um avoid the dunya and avoid uh success as Muslims. On the contrary, a Muslim, a strong Muslim is
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is better than a weak Muslim. Right? But what I'm seeing is especially as someone who lives in Silicon Valley, California,
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is that there are many Muslims in positions of power, including in places like Palante or Google, Meta, and yet
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they don't say anything about the genocide. They're afraid of their colleagues or their bosses and their Zionist kind of status quo. But nothing
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will change if we don't keep pushing the envelope a little bit further and just sacrificing a little bit of those eight
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in service of the three. Um I can't you know I shudder to think the the consequences of that spiritually and
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clearly in this world we are seeing the ruination of our um and the catastrophic
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phase we are in because nobody wants to relinquish their grip over their privilege. Nobody wants to sacrifice
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anything. There's a wonderful brother in in the UK, Sheikh Ali Hammuda, uh who said
Scholars silence on Gaza
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something I think that really made me think. He said that if a if a sheh if a scholar today has been silent on Gaza,
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um then you should be reminded that uh you should never take Islam from them in
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the future. I mean that's a very very strong statement like almost as if um this is a
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such a seismic issue but a scholar who's silent on it should should really be avoided. I mean do you agree with that
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statement? I don't see that as controversial at all because what he's saying is is common
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sense Islam. It shouldn't be um uh kind of something that is put up for debate
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because ultimately the um the prophet sallallaihi wasallam referred to it as one body and if one if one body is
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hurting then we should all be hurting but this is so much more than that. This is not just one body part hurting. This
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is the body on fire. And we have our rearranging the furniture or uh like the violinists of the Titanic. They're
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talking about uh uh random random topics that have no no relation to the actual
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you know condition which is our our ship is sinking and there are Jewish and Christian thinkers now putting out books
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uh Judaism after Gaza, Christianity after Gaza, how do we grapple with a loss of innocence? That kind of you know
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well-meaning but a little bit narcissistic kind of writing. But I don't see enough scholars saying what
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did teach us? What is this? What are we going to do afterwards? This collapse of the rules-based order. How how are we
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Muslims rising up to the to the this leadership vacuum in the whole world? They're calling out for morality.
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They're calling out for humanity. The world is calling out for a prophetic model a different way. And Muslims are
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supposed to be at the forefront of that. And yet what they are reverting back to kind of the customs and the culture and
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the taboss and the fears exactly like the early you know uh call of dharma of
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Islam where people were so beholden to their forefathers or to the customs of
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the day or to the culture of the day that they they saw the call and they
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disobeyed it. They ran away from it. And I shudder to think that we are falling into that trap of potential disbelief
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and hypocrisy. And there's um you know I I'm wary of invoking visions as a kind of a source
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of of knowledge. But but this one has to be shared because it came from the heart of Gaza from the heart of the man-made
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famine two days ago. Uh somebody reported that they saw the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam in a dream
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and he was very very cross. He was very angry and he was riding on his horse without a saddle. His face was very red
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and they were saying yahasool Allah are you mad at us? And he wouldn't reply. He wouldn't talk to them. And he kept
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riding riding please. Yahasool Allah are you mad at us? And he wouldn't reply.
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And then he came down and he saw that it was a person from Gaza and say go for you are blessed. And to Shahed Wamid
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like I'm not mad at you. I'm mad at them the onlookers the people who stood by
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and let you be slaughtered. And then he used this you know earthshattering verse he said uh whoever walks away from this
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Allah will replace them with uh with another people that are not like you. So
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we should all shudder and fear for ourselves that will we be with those who are going to be replaced. How are we so
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sure that we are going to be able to face sallahu alaihi wasallam on judgment day with our head high? I don't know how
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people make excuses for for for themselves after all of this after this river of blood. They still say, "Oh,
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well, legally speaking, I'm not obliged to say anything. You know, you don't know what I'm doing behind closed doors.
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Oh, you uh angry mob of Muslims, you're so ignorant. You don't know me. I'm I'm playing 4D chess. I'm playing the large
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game here. You um I'm too metaphysical for your feeble minds." And these kind of arrogant excuses that I make, they're
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so hard-hearted. I don't know where this comes from. This is not Islam. This is not this is not the prophetic tradition.
Sufis of today
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Uh Sufis um you uh reserve a lot of your written ayah and alhamdulillah I have to
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say to our read our listeners and viewers to go to your subst because I think alhamdulillah your your written
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work is is really exceptional. But you talk about uh today's Sufis and
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here's a quote. You state that they promote they are responsible for a promotion of an aberrant
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state sponsored form of Islam in the form of a madali sufism. Uh I mean what
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do you mean by madali sufism? Okay so let me maybe give your listeners
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kind of a background on on on my work. I actually did my master's thesis on um
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manufacturing Sufism as good Islam as Islam light as the client kind of Islam
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and I used different u kind of um uh examples to illustrate how that
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happened. I use maana room and even though once upon a time he actually fought the Mongols he's been fashioned
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as this um you know uh they really literally sell room spice online from
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Afghanistan and this exotic other this dervish who is dosile and quiet in the
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face of injustice which is not true he was a serious jurist and he actually fought inward and deed uh the Mongols
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and so there's uh this concerted campaign from from the beginning to um
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classify Islam and and different strands of it. And this was first done by
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orientalist scholars who wanted to just like zoology just like encyclopedic kind
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of approach to knowledge. Just like look in in this world of other this exotic barbaric tradition there are these uh
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dervishes they do this and there are these people who do that and these are Persians and these are Salafies and we
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still see this um to this day uh Islamistwani uh these categorizations we've kind of
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internalized them ourselves as Muslims and started using them even the word umi
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didn't exist before Masin himself coined it so we don't realize realize how much
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of our our own vernacular even about ourselves is produced by uh uh
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orientalist scholars. So this is the background of of all of this. And so what I my research has
25:10
found is that once upon a time war on terror style rhetoric was reserved to
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these so-called Sufis. Um and I and I call them uh Sufis but they saw
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themselves as normal Muslims. They saw themselves as having you know a school of a school of and a school of tesia
25:28
oran. So this much to do about Sufias and it was much more fluid and porous
25:33
and holistic in the pre-colonial era for someone to say they're a Sufi wasn't such a big deal. It was just embibed in
25:40
their everyday practice. So the funny thing is once upon a time the the word dervish would have struck fear uh in the
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hearts of British and Italian colonizers because in Somalia Sheikh Muhammad Abd
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Hassan the leader of uh the Somali resistance to European colonization uh
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were called uh the dervishes uh because because they belonged um to a so-called
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Sufi and so um people like Abd Jazahi and I think you've spoken withh
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before this on this but in general um the the leaders of of this kind of
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resistance to injustice for at least in the 19th century were by by and large um
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so-called Sufi scholars even Salahadin and Aubi who liberated Jerusalem would
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uh would start before his military campaigns and doing vikar in his zawya before uh going on to to face uh the
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crusaders. So there's a lot of this rich history that unfortunately because of a a lot of uh colonially baked thinking
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that prevents us from seeing um the reality of of Islamic history on our own
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terms. Who are these people we're talking about here? Let's let's talk about without you
Who are these scholars?
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know with in in a respectful way but yeah let's you know give some names to
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uh to these scholars who are sedating the Muslim um
27:06
yeah I mean you asked me about medalism right and I I don't think I addressed that term specifically and I think the
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founder of that sect or school or whatever you want to call it just passed away
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uh he's a cafi figure who uh called for the unconditional obedience to the ruler
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and the state no matter what which I I argue is a very extreme position. Sunni
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scholars, Shia scholars never nobody could justify this no matter what caveat.
27:36
I think I remember recently there was a a scholar in Saudi Arabia that said even if the the the ruler commits zena on TV
27:44
Yes. in front of everyone we should still obeis ruler. Right. So that's how far they're willing to go.
27:50
Exactly. Exactly. And this metalism is not just reserved to Salafi scholars. We
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see it very evident in neotraditionalist and Sufi scholars in the west. So the
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irony is they spent so long for the greater part of the 20th century fighting each other saying you know
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copism is this ba and this that and they and then they call the other bida but if they look at each other they they look
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very much alike because what they were both doing is arguing for uh a powerlind
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Islam an Islam that didn't see that the biggest threat to all of us is um the
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the the heavily regulated nation state that was invested in producing ing these
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categories that it could control. So, ironically, this is not a new problem. I
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could tell you that uh if we go back to even like fifth and fourth century BC
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with Plato himself, you will find that there have always been court
28:48
intellectuals. There have always been people who were ready to um to do
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rhetorical laundering and a hollowing out of ethics of Islam. Islam then would
29:00
be anacronistic but today we would we would we we can clearly see that and and
29:05
Plato called them sophists right he he said that they you know serve tyrants
29:10
directly uh and they helped justify power structures under the guise of virtue and clever speech. So Plato
29:17
criticizes these um sophists for uh teaching that justice is the advantage
29:23
of the stronger um and for selling arguments to the highest bidder so to speak. So when you hear scholars, you
29:30
say there's nothing wrong with what they're saying. It sounds so beautiful. Uh but this is kind of a a way to
29:36
launder um and and and kind of um whitewash Islam through verbal trickery.
29:43
Uh calling injustice realism and calling cervility and impotence wisdom and
29:50
virtue or peace. So what happens then when that becomes the norm of our
29:55
scholarship? our intellectual class, the people who are supposed to be the prophetic bearers risk becoming
30:02
mouthpieces for desperatism. They betray uh the truth in favor of virtue and
30:07
curring kind of personal gain. So the seduction of reason kind of into service of tyranny and we see this happening for
30:15
example in the west where uh for example uh I could think of somebody like Hamza
30:21
Ysef who is very eloquent mashallah and he's helped a lot of people along the
30:26
way but at the core of it what when he says things like you know suffer in silence or you know if if only you just
30:34
sit quietly and and don't do anything about your your oppression or your suffering then maybe the world will will
30:40
will see you as human beings and maybe they'll not see you as these mad barbaric radicals. Um but for me what
30:47
that does is kind of it throws um the majority of the Muslim um under the bus
30:52
because it is appealing to the logic of the strong. It is saying that anybody anybody who resists no matter what is is
31:00
is apparent. It's is is wrong. So that is immediately is foder for um the state
31:07
state sponsored powers because and and they do this thinking that they are protecting the sanctity of the tradition
31:14
um and protecting it from uh kind of rogue and radical ideas. But I would turn that on its head and say actually
31:21
these are the rogue and radical ideas when you are giving cart blanch unchecked power uh to the state security
31:29
apparatus to do as it will to to you know uh impart all kinds of manners of
31:35
horrors upon innocents and then let that be. Uh what what what is that then? That
31:41
is essentially that is the bida that is the aberration of our tradition and that is the betrayal of Islam. when you are
31:47
kind of giving a blind cover and a theological cover um to to to the to the
31:54
tyrant. So that is not that is not theology that is sophistry or you could call it a theology of impotence or
32:00
disgrace. She bin Ba She Hamza Yusf they have a very close connection with the UAE
UAE and scholars
32:06
government and the UAE government is probably one of the most distasteful governments uh out there at the moment.
32:12
They harm and attack Muslims and kill large numbers of people and they prevent
32:18
Islam from returning in any uh society through civil through civic action. Uh
32:25
they fund uh tyrants in Libya and in Sudan.
32:32
Why do these how do these scholars get away with such close proximity to
32:37
feronic leaders in the Muslim world? It's uh it's really a sign of the times
32:43
right to see this happen. Um it's reminds me of that verse. Um
32:53
those to say who say to their brethren and they and they sat i.e. watched while
32:59
they were you know um uh under oppression if you if only you had obeyed
33:04
us. If only you had obeyed us you wouldn't have been killed. Um so really it's this kind of misuse of the Islamic
33:12
tradition again like I said earlier um according to Plato this service of of
33:17
the strong in service of the of the state um and and the UAE what it has
33:23
done is single-handedly I had uh someone a scholar approach me uh one of the
33:28
largest um conventions of um of Muslims in North America and he said what's what's the matter with you and and your
33:35
focus on on on the UAE and this person is Libyan. He's of Libyan descent. And I can't believe he asked me that.
33:41
Uh but why the UAE? Why are you so fixated on that? And I said that, you know, the UAE is
33:47
single-handedly, professedly, and purport like they they're actually proud of it that they
33:53
are more um heavy-handed with war on terror style policies than the US and
33:59
Israel itself. They've even exceeded uh those who were the brainchild of this
34:05
demonization and otherization of any Muslim in politics. Any Muslim who who
34:10
resists injustice, any Muslim who resists tyranny is immediately cast as bad and worthy of extermination, i.e. an
34:18
Islamist, a terrorist and all these subjective words that are not from our tradition. They they've come from
34:24
somewhere else. So in effect they're what they're doing assumingly they they assume that they
34:30
are protecting the Islamic tradition but like I said they are weakening it from the inside because they are making it
34:37
foder for these extremist um you know um state sponsored terrorists essentially.
34:44
Uh, and so it leaves the average Muslim very vulnerable because it sets the dogs upon them and it throws people under the
34:50
bus like people in Gaza, uh, people in Yemen, it throws them under the bus because they don't have the backing. It
34:57
casts that what they're doing with suspicion. And so they have more kind of more um
35:04
they hate um what's the word? They they hate Islamists more than they hate kind
35:10
of these external forces against the ummah like the Zionists and you know western powers that are actually in real
35:17
time using um obscene kind of military and firepower against innocents.
Adab
35:22
Dr. Farah um there will be people in the comment section who argue that this
35:28
conversation lacks adab you know we shouldn't be calling out scholars so openly
35:34
you know let Shik Hamza Yusf have close proximity to UAE we don't know what he's doing behind closed doors
35:41
uh if we call him out and we say that you've been silent on Gaza you've
35:47
allowed the tyrants to remain uh with their tyranny which he has you know there's no doubt in my mind he has
35:54
uh you're undermining you know Islamic scholarship and if you do that you break
36:00
down the religion and you allow the religion to disappear uh from from you
36:06
know from the consciousness of of ordinary people and so have some proportion here when it comes to when it
36:12
comes to such important figures of Islam right well I like to joke sometimes that
36:18
I see myself as like the Forest Gump figure of uh these kind of traditionalist.
36:25
For whatever reason, Allah has put me in in a path where I have befriended some
36:31
of these people. Uh many of them were my teachers, elders, mentors. Um she Hamza
36:36
himself has taught me in the past. Uh so I have no uh personal acts to grind with
36:42
anybody. This is about the state of our um this is motivated by um a concern for
36:49
for the sanctity of Islam, for the Muslim scholarly tradition, for the Quran and the Sunnah. And you know, like
36:55
I said, the house is on fire. And we we because we love our scholars, we expect
37:01
more of them. We um politely ask of them to rise of to the demands of this
37:07
moment. And they could say like, "Oh, it's the end times. It's fitna. uh why speak up now? You know, you should just
37:14
stay at home, stay closeted, stay quiet, be wise. But the prophet sallall alaihi wasallam said, if you have one small um
37:21
you know uh facil like a small tree in your hand and the hour comes, plant it.
37:27
There's nothing in our tradition that says uh be deaf, dumb, and mute when you see something wrong. there's no uh kind
37:34
kind of conditional cut off time to speaking uh the truth to power and kind of making the revelation alive because
37:42
this risks becoming like in Islam we don't have a clerical class per se we are not like the Christians and Jews we
37:49
don't have a rabbitic class uh all all of our scholars mashallah are inheritors
37:55
right they're supposed to be the inheritors of the prophets and that is a very lofty um and high call and a high
38:01
calling So um it is is it is more out of love and a motivation out of uh seeing
38:08
the highest ideals of leadership and then seeing this very wide gap and mismatch that motivates us to speak. I
38:15
don't enjoy speaking about this. I'm a you know I'm a kind of a a nerd. I like to do my scholarship I my research. I
38:22
should be working on my academic book. But the cries and the calls of the women
38:27
and children and fathers who are literally do dropping dead on the streets because fatwas and forums and
38:34
interfaith councils and and you know virtue and peace and all of these that gave kind of theological and political
38:41
rubber stamping for this atrocity to go on for two years plus now. Shebin Baya
38:47
is very close to the uh regime in in the UAE who as we've established uh work day
38:54
and night against against Islam uh and the Muslim Ummah. Um and also the UAE is
39:00
very close to to Israel. I mean we can probably argue these are Arab Zionists really. I mean if there is a an example
39:06
of an Arab Zionist regime, it's the government of the UAE with Saudi Arabia and Jordan and and all of these regimes.
39:12
Um uh is it in the interest of Israel to promote this emasculated version of
39:18
Islam? Yes. Uh clearly so anyone who reads um
39:24
20th century history can see that even the war on terror was cooked up um it
39:30
was the brainchild of Netanyahu and other Israeli politicians and officials.
39:35
So, uh, anybody can easily look up the clean break, uh, a new strategy for
39:41
securing the realm and protecting Israel. And this was done in 1996. Uh,
39:48
it was it was essentially a plan to take out seven countries in 5 years. uh and
39:53
and and trump up or exaggerate the threat of so-called Islamic terror um in
40:00
in the minds of people then instead of Muslim leaders and Muslim states
40:06
recognizing that and seeing it for what it is, they're actually aiding and abetting it and actually funding it. Uh
40:12
the UAE is actively funding this clean break plan which is arguably well underway. Um and so this plan to take
40:19
out seven countries in five in five years. Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya,
40:25
Syria, Lebanon, and um now Gaza, Palestine, of course. So um that is what
40:31
baffles me and that is what I don't understand brother Muhammad is that why
40:36
uh take this clearly sinister plan to break up Muslim countries to weaken them
40:42
to denigrate uh Islam and Muslims to erase any kind of ethical and moral code
40:48
within Islam and just make it about you know hijabs and abayas and masids and
40:54
going this and listening to Islamic lectures and then uh this is a kind of an a sinister effort to reform Islam.
41:02
And I remember the good professor Dr. uh Jonathan Brown once tweeted. He said um
41:08
what happened to the um you know calls for where's the Martin Luther Muslim Martin Luther? We don't hear that
41:14
anymore. Well, I tweeted back at him and I said it didn't need to happen. Doesn't need to happen because this reformation of
41:20
Islam has happened already on the state level. uh and and the people the leaders
41:25
the likes of MBZ and NBS are readily doing it and they're doing it. They are trying to change an Islam an Islam of
41:33
quietism an Islam that stays quiet in the face of injustice an Islam that
41:38
bends over to any kind of repression. Um and and and the shocking thing is that
41:44
scholars are aiding and abetting that instead of saying oh look you you know just see things for what they are. Imm
41:51
Ali said this, "May Allah allow me to see things for what they are. It is a blessing to be able to see reality and
41:57
call it out for what it is." This is not radical. This is actual history. If anybody can go on Wikipedia and see
42:04
these plans, in fact, uh there's also something that we don't really speak about much. It's kind of this Cypuspico
42:10
2.0. You know, the sequel is always worse than the original. It's called the Yinon Plan. Um and again here Israeli
42:18
officials were um very very um verbose and very articulate in the 80s in in
42:24
their plan for how to secure the realm of Israel and greater Israel and this expansion. And they were saying that you
42:30
know we want to the the the Middle East to become uh ethnostates uh many like uh
42:36
ffts um based on ethnic and sectarian lines and look at look at the state of
42:42
of the Middle East. Look at state of the Arab world. This is exactly what is happening. Um, and it's really high time
42:47
we woke up and wrestled back our own our own narrative and our own Islam from the
42:53
hands of those that are trying to destroy it. Dr. Farah, I've come across Muslims
Why centre Gaza?
42:59
recently who came to me and wanted to be on my program and uh, you know, he does a lot of work within the Muslim
43:05
community in the UK and um, I asked him well for the last two years almost two
43:10
years you've never mentioned Gaza once. M you produce a lot of material, a lot of written material. You talk about the
43:16
problems in the Muslim community in the UK. So he's not someone who's detached from problems, but you've not once talked about Gaza.
43:24
And his response was, you know, should we talk about Allah or should we talk about Gaza? M
43:29
uh you know which was a ridiculous answer of course uh but um there is this sort of belief that why are you
43:36
projecting Gaza as the most important issue of our day like you know I think he went on to say well why don't you
43:42
talk about Sudan and why don't you talk about you know the weaguers and you know why is it that Gaza is so important like
43:49
why why are you century Gaza I suppose is the question as the most significant challenge for
43:56
this Muslim um first of all All of these atrocities are interconnected.
44:02
Gaza is not a standalone thing. Gaza is perhaps the most jarring and shocking
44:07
live stream holocaust. Um it's it's in in its intensity that we've been able to
44:13
really see live streamed. And I think that is from Allah. Allah wants us to see that everything is from Allah. So
44:19
for for us to separate like Gaza, Sudan, let's talk about something else. That to
44:24
me is a refracted view, a fragmented view of the world. In fact, Allah is
44:30
calling us to to his loved ones, to his oppressed uh uh you know innocents who
44:37
are you know there's nothing more Islamic really than hearing the cry of a mother is like where are you? Wow
44:43
Muhammad where are you oh um of Islam. So to ignore that I think is is a huge
44:49
affront to to our beautiful Islamic tradition and it's unnatural because
44:55
when you when you look away from all of that suffering and these are believing people these are of Quran there are more
45:02
memorizers of Quran and Gaza per capita than in the entire world and the grandfather of our beloved prophet
45:09
sallallaihi wasallam is buried there it's called to hashim so it is kind of the ancestral prophetic calling ing cry
45:16
for the entire world and not just for the ummah. Gaza is not just catastrophe
45:22
and blood and sorrow and famine and starvation. Gaza can be a teacher. Gaza
45:27
is calling upon us to wake up. Gaza is an opportunity. It is a sign that we've
45:33
lost our way as human beings that we need to really course correct because while all of us moved on in the
45:39
so-called postcolonial moment and we got siloed in our little happy little nation
45:45
states and our little like heavily regulated uh you know sedated lives. Uh
45:51
Palestine did not partake in that illusion. It did not partake in that
45:56
macabra of of lies and deception. It's always been a wakeup call. So those who
46:02
turn away from are turning their backs on the truth. And when you turn your back on the truth, your very humanity,
46:09
your very faith is at risk. Because why did Allah create us ultimately to be a
46:14
khalifa of Allah on this earth? Not just to frolic about and make fatwas and go
46:20
to conferences and feel good about ourselves as Muslims. There's an even the angels they asked Allah why would
46:27
you create a creature like this human being who would cause so much fitna and corruption and bloodshed and what did
46:34
Allah says I I know what you do not I know what you do not so in that I think
46:40
is a kind of an invitation for us to inculcate some of the divine qualities
46:46
yes Allah is latif yes Allah is is is yes Allah is merciful kind gentle and
46:51
loving but Allah is also the avenger Allah is also alab. Allah is Malik Mul.
46:57
The all dominion belongs to him. And so if I could summarize the entirety of of my project of why I speak about Islam
47:04
and colonialism and power and injustice, it comes from just this one idea. Uh the
47:10
the father who was like why are you crying? He went viral when when someone lost a child. He was like
47:17
why are you crying? He's a shahid. He's a shahid. The faith of the people of Gaza reminded me of this and he said
47:22
this live on air when he he lost yet another son a couple of weeks ago. He said the throne of God is Israel higher
47:29
than it is. Is America and their bombs and the UAE and their ATMs giving funding this campaign of death are they
47:37
higher than Allah then? No. No, they are not higher than the throne of God. And that is what we
47:42
mean when we say Allah abbar that there is no deity, no worldly force, no bomb,
47:48
uh no drone, no F-16, no M16, no tank that is greater or worthy of fear or
47:56
worship than Allah himself. And Allah is the avenger and he will inshallah avenge these people. And I shudder to see what
48:03
this um revenge of Gaza will look like and I think it will swallow the whole world.
48:09
Uh Dr. you are an American Muslim and you live in the heart of this empire. Um, America
American Muslims
48:17
is deeply uh involved in this murder and
48:22
slaughter and genocide and holocaust in Gaza. I I want to ask you a question about American Muslims. Um do you feel
48:30
that um American Muslims as a result of Gaza have woken up have realized that
48:38
there is a special responsibility they have in challenging this empire or is
48:45
there a sedation that you talk of previously? Is that what's stronger? In other words, that sedation
48:51
or uh a willingness to to uh to be a
48:57
voice for this Muslim um this the despair that the um faces in Gaza, which is winning?
49:05
Yeah, I mean I would answer that as a as a historian, right? If you look at Western civilization and specifically
49:12
the American Revolution, it had good ideas. It was once beholdened to the
49:17
idea that um you know rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God and that uh
49:22
the ultimate tieos of the west is is liberty and justice and all children
49:28
under God and and and just this u idea that to be uh a good Christian is to
49:35
walk the path of justice. So I think unfortunately what we are seeing now is a failure of these ideals. Um, Islam's
49:44
project is yet to be realized uh, civilizationally. We've kind of been an
49:49
alul for 500 years or so. We've internalized this kind of um, inferiority complex. We're always on the
49:56
defensive. We're always trying to say, "Oh, no. We're good. Look at this. We're we're good Muslim. We're liberal. We
50:02
we're always doing this dance and we always want a seat at the table, but the table doesn't want us. The table isn't
50:07
really there. So trying to perform this good Muslim, this Uncle Tom is it's it's
50:14
a losing battle because what Islam represents is kind of a wedding of all
50:19
previous prophecies. Um it seeks to remove the kind of supremacy of the
50:24
Benny Israel, the tribal supremacy of Benny Israel and kind of this arrogance of the Judeo-Christian project that now
50:32
we can see is defunct. So what I really call uh western Muslims to do is to kind
50:37
of lean in to say this vacuum that this thing that you've professed to do has
50:43
clearly now um failed because it ended up in cattle slavery, colonialism, world
50:51
wars and genocide. So much bloodshed, so much injustice in the name of this so-called superior Judeo-Christian West.
51:00
Um, and then the reaction to that shouldn't be like fight or flight or
51:05
frozen or performing. It should be leaning back in to our incredibly rich tradition and the prophetic example um
51:14
of of accepting that perhaps Islam has the answers. And I think that is
51:19
something that we need to lean into and be proud of instead of cowering and apologizing and trying to fit back into
51:26
a model that's already expelled us. It's rejected us. We've learned so many times
51:31
that even those who do the dance, even those who try to fit in the box and try
51:36
to be uh good Muslims, so to speak, were ended up flat on their faces. They will
51:42
still call them terrorists. They will still call them radicals. They will still be sus suspicious of their
51:48
background from either from racialized or other kind of prejudices. So why not
51:54
reclaim uh a kind of a of an of an opportunity for humanity to kind of be
52:01
the best of both the west and Islam. You talk about the need to meld to bring
Justice and Islam
52:07
together to fuse justice with Islam. And um from what you suggest um you know
52:14
young Muslims who embark on a uh a program of of um traditional Islamic
52:20
study they're very much in danger of being sedated. So they go to these institutions where there's al ahar or
52:25
medina or elsewhere and and they study under scholars who teach them this
52:31
sedated version of Islam that strips away often just not all of the time of course but
52:37
you know more often than not strips away justice from uh the faith from the
52:42
spiritual practice. Yeah. Um uh would you suggest that there
52:47
is a real danger uh for for young Muslims who go and study in these institutions uh a danger of of actually
52:55
studying a form of Islam that is in that is out of sync with uh with the tradition?
53:00
I am I'm not against um studying anywhere or under anybody. uh there we
53:06
don't have this kind of um insular outlook in Islam on in fact we should all be exposed to as many ideas as
53:13
possible in order to not fall into this trap of performative piety or
53:18
crystallizing the tradition or making an idol out of it. Uh but with a caveat uh
53:24
um everybody has to introspect according to where they are in their life. Everybody has to look back at their own
53:31
conditioning, their upbringing or what ideas have inculcated in their minds, in their spirits. How is their iman? Is it
53:38
healthy? If it's not healthy, they need to strengthen it before they go into um
53:43
kind of these circles. And and yes, they might fall prey to epistemologies that
53:48
are um kind of unhealthy for one's iman and one's sound spiritual upbringing,
53:54
but at the same time, it it really depends on the person. So for example,
54:00
I invite people to introspect before they embark on an academic program to study Islam. They they they might find
54:06
that ever since they were a child, they were conditioned to obey, right? At any at any cost, at any uh situation, obey
54:14
the parents, obey your principal, obey the teacher, the policeman, and then the ruler, right? Uh our idea of a good
54:21
Muslim is a quiet one, a plant one, someone who doesn't ruffle feathers, someone whose head is laying low. um we
54:27
were never taught healthy prophetic descent. We were never taught how to be
54:33
honest um to speak and healthy conversations. So really it's about the formation of the human being of the of
54:39
the Muslim, what does it mean to be human, right? If you've had traumas, if you have generational traumas, your
54:45
parents survived the nekba or partition, you have to look into that. You have to really be self-aware
54:51
uh before you embark on anything uh let alone serious academic study because without self-awareness you might take
54:59
that these psychological and spiritual traps of your ego and narcissism and
55:04
then embibe that with your scholarship and we don't need any more uh egoomaniacal scholars. We really need
55:10
people who are humble, self-aware, who are open to dialogue. That's what we need more of in the ummah.
55:16
Dr. you were recently uh you visited Jerusalem very recently and um
55:22
uh you witnessed uh the Israeli regime and its uh activities in in Ala in
55:29
particular and Jerusalem. Just tell us a little bit about your journey please. Yeah, so um when I was there, Jerusalem
55:36
is very emotional for me because it's the only place on earth that I really feel at home. Um and it's uh they say
55:44
about alutz that there is not an inch in it that a prophet or a saint um didn't
55:49
step on. So every inch of it is holy. But to see all of that beauty and
55:54
holiness and and that kind of symbol of humanity be uh strangulated and
56:00
desecrated by a supremacist regime that less than 70 kilometers away was
56:05
genociding the native population was extremely painful to witness. Um it's it
56:10
was as if the walls of Jerusalem were were calling out for us for calling out for people of conscience. Where are you?
56:17
You oh you who claim to face the of Mecca and and and and go to Haj and
56:22
spend millions and millions each year and and it was empty. Nobody was there. And and and the people of Jerusalem, the
56:29
natives, they always say, "Please come visit us. They need to know that we still care about this first kibla of
56:35
Islam and this uniting potential uh that that Jerusalem really holds. And um it
56:42
was very sad but at the same time I also saw the fickleness and the weakness of
56:47
the security apparatus of the apartheid regime. Uh the soldiers were afraid. Uh
56:54
they couldn't look anybody who was Arab or Muslim in the eye. Um, and so that is what saddens me is that it's kind of um,
57:01
you know, the Quran refers to these um, structures as as more fickle than a
57:07
spiderweb. The reality of this enemy is is weakness. And yet we still um, almost
57:14
have this uh, fear to the to the extent of worship that oh this is there's no
57:21
way we can defeat this and there's this is too powerful. They're too strong. But in reality, uh, they know that they they
57:28
are weak. They know their days are numbered. Uh, they know they're a settler, colonial, foreign entity, um, kind of in
57:35
a in a land that's not theirs. So, scripture is with us. Uh, belief is with
57:40
us. History is with us. And yet, we still cower to their narrative, to their calculus, to what they want and plan and
57:47
see. That to me is a real lapse in in in the good standing and the the health of
57:53
our collective iman. Dr. Farel Sharif, I think that's really been a fascinating conversation.
57:59
Thank you so much for your time today. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.
58:07
Please remember to subscribe to our social media and YouTube channels and head over to our website
58:12
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