Ali Dawah - August 09, 2017


WHO DECIDES WHOS A SCHOLAR？ SH TAHIR WYATT


Episode Stats

Length

5 minutes

Words per Minute

164.44058

Word Count

948

Sentence Count

50

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 The first part of the question is defining who the scholars are.
00:00:13.100 What has happened is, there are a group of brothers, like you said,
00:00:17.320 there is no doubt that our deen encourages us to take from the ulaman.
00:00:22.860 And Allah says in the Quran,
00:00:25.020 Ask the people of knowledge if you don't know.
00:00:30.820 So there are a lot of things about our religion that we don't know.
00:00:33.780 It's our obligation at that point, if we're not from the people of Ishtihad or from the students of knowledge
00:00:39.900 who can go back and study the issues for themselves,
00:00:42.720 then you have to go to somebody whose knowledge you respect,
00:00:46.260 whose God consciousness and taqwa you respect,
00:00:49.560 and you go to them and you ask them.
00:00:50.900 The concept in the Prophet, many hadith that talk about the virtue of the scholars,
00:00:56.540 this is something that is undeniable.
00:00:58.400 I would hope that no Muslim denies the virtue of the scholars.
00:01:03.320 The problem is, is when we get a group of people who champion that,
00:01:10.080 but then they define for everybody else who the scholars are.
00:01:15.300 So the scholars are the people who they have a connection with.
00:01:18.720 And the point is to monopolize authenticity of dawah.
00:01:24.820 So no dawah is authentic unless we've sanctioned it.
00:01:29.320 And we sanction it, we have that ability to sanction.
00:01:33.180 We are the accrediting body that sanctions whether or not this dawah is correct or not.
00:01:39.120 We are the accrediting body because we have been given that authority by the scholars.
00:01:45.620 Well, the question is, who gave you the right to determine for the people in the West that these are the scholars?
00:01:56.000 Okay, this is the first question.
00:01:57.740 This is a very important point here.
00:02:00.080 And it's not to deny the scholarship of the ones that they are saying are scholars.
00:02:06.720 Because they may or may not be.
00:02:08.060 That's not really my issue here.
00:02:09.260 Why are they the only scholars that we can refer to?
00:02:15.020 And if we go outside of those four or five who they have determined and declared to be the scholars,
00:02:21.600 then we are not going back to the right scholars or whatever the situation may be.
00:02:26.780 So, I mean, the first part of their logic that's flawed is that they are trying to tell us who the scholars are.
00:02:36.180 When, in fact, the scholars of Islam have recognized many more people and some of them more prominently
00:02:43.800 than the ones that they have set up to be scholars in the West without going into any names.
00:02:49.280 All right.
00:02:49.500 So, that's the first thing that has to be dealt with.
00:02:54.580 The second thing is that there's almost a degree of self-hate that is involved in that or a lack of self-worth.
00:03:04.240 And if we look at it, every other country, besides us gullible Western brothers, every other country has their own scholars.
00:03:13.500 They may not be on the level of the scholars here who have dedicated their entire lives to the study of Islam.
00:03:21.420 But if you go to Nigeria, there are scholars.
00:03:23.680 If you go to Senegal, there are scholars.
00:03:25.940 If you go to Pakistan, there are scholars.
00:03:28.320 India, there's so on and so forth.
00:03:29.840 Right.
00:03:29.940 So, we have gotten to the point that we can't even recognize our own scholarship.
00:03:38.360 That there may perhaps be people in the United States of America who can answer a large amount of the questions that we have.
00:03:49.440 And that doesn't mean that they're going to be able to answer every question so that they're from the kibar ul ulama or to the end of it.
00:03:54.540 But that's not the condition that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala laid down on the Quran or from the sunnah of the Prophet alayhi wasallahu alayhi wasallam.
00:04:01.520 The person needs to know about what they're talking about.
00:04:04.540 It doesn't mean they have to be from the kibar ulama where they are what we would call encyclopedic in their knowledge.
00:04:09.400 Right.
00:04:10.400 No.
00:04:10.980 But if you ask them about Islamic finance, they can answer that.
00:04:14.300 If you ask them about ibadat, then this person can answer that.
00:04:17.000 But what's happened is we've denied our own scholarship, you know, in the name of propping up these other scholars or in the name of respecting these other scholars.
00:04:28.340 And so, as such, you know, we turn our backs on the fact that, hey, maybe we need to be further supporting our own scholars.
00:04:37.020 And again, scholarship is of different levels and maybe this person is not a scholar, but he's a solid student of knowledge who can deal with this particular, you know, contemporary issue that has come up.
00:04:49.980 Or we have bodies of scholars because we have in the West, we have certain bodies of scholars who when they get together, I think that their scholarship is noteworthy.
00:05:02.440 It's something that should at least be taken into consideration and we shouldn't just ignore the fact, you know, that we do have some people of knowledge among us in the West who can help deal with some of these issues.
00:05:12.240 So I think that that diversion tactic that is used is because it is profitable to the people who use it.
00:05:20.880 And I'm not saying that I'm not I'm not talking about intention here, that every single person that says, hey, you need to follow, follow the scholars, follow the scholars, that this is their that this is their idea, that they're looking for something outside of what they really believe is the truth.
00:05:34.420 But I'm keenly aware that there are some that definitely profit from the fact that they seem to have this monopoly on what is authentic Dawa.