Salafism: The Truths & Controversies You Need to Know — Dr. Yasir Qadhi & Dr. Emad Hamdeh

Assalamu alaykum everyone, and welcome. Uh, I'm really honored to be sitting down today with uh Dr. Yaser Khadi. Uh Dr. Yaser, welcome. It's a pleasure to have you here.

Alhamdulillah, welcome for having me on your podcast, and alhamdulillah. It's great to also hear and see of your progress. Alhamdulillah, we've known each other for a long time. You know how many years, and I've seen you even when you're doing your PhDs and PhD, and you're moving on. Alhamdulillah. And your book as well on Albani. Um, you know, I read through it, and it was in draft form, and uh you, I was honored that you asked me to write a blurb for it as well. So alhamdulillah, uh it's great; our areas of research are actually overlapping. Alhamdulillah.

Yes. Alhamdulillah. Subhan Allah. Uh Khali and myself have a relationship through the uh academia uh for several years. Uh, when I was writing my PhD, uh it's, you know, when you're writing a a thesis or a book, subhanah, it's a very lonely process, and sometimes you need that person just to uh pick their brain or ask a question, and uh despite his busy schedule, uh has always been generous uh with me with his time, so I appreciate you again to uh be here and sitting with me. Alhamdulillah.

It's always a pleasure. And for the record, anybody who's interested in, you know, detailed stuff about advanced Islamic theology or modern stuff, anything that intrigues me, I always carve time out for them because I love, this is actually my passion is, you know, Islamic knowledge and, you know, especially obscure topics that people are not interested in lectures about. So, actually, your PhD topic was very intriguing to me. And, uh, it wasn't just for your sake, Ahmad. I'll be honest with you, it was also the topic. Okay. I love the topic, and I love uh uh just thinking about these types of issues. And you're right, when people write about um uh specific, you know, niche topics, it does get very lonely, and it's nice to find somebody who's interested in the same topic, and all of a sudden there's this camaraderie and brotherhood that that you're aware of. So yes, it is it's it was nice. Alhamdulillah. May Allah bless your project as well.

Amen. In all of us. So uh I wanted to just uh share with the viewers the two books. So here uh this is my book on the right, copism and traditionalism uh scholarly authority in modern Islam. In this book, I really focus on the tensions between Salafi and traditionalists on uh two areas mainly Islamic law and hadith. Uh Kadi uh his book just came out, understanding Salafism. Uh I had the pleasure of reading this book before it was published, alhamdulillah, and wrote an endorsement for it. Uh, what makes this book unique is uh its comprehensive uh view of the movement. So in if you look at books on copism, a lot of them will cover a very uh specific aspect of the movement, like myself, I focused on uh Albani and his critics. Uh but this is the first book that covers the movement from uh A to Z uh which was really missing from the field. Uh so I'll link the books inshallah in the description, and uh Yaser congratulations on this excellent uh contribution.

Alhamdulillah. I genuinely feel very humbled and honored, and it's a monumental project for me. Eight years in the making uh not because I spent eight years fully on this book but because of my busy schedule, and I am very very happy at the reception amongst academics and uh it's been very uh humbling, and I hope inshallah it is a benefit to anybody who's interested in the modern Muslim world.

A mean. A mean. In so just to uh take advantage of time uh uh you know when I was writing my book uh you know the topic of copism uh stirs a lot of emotion uh because for a lot of people copism is not only a religious idea, it's it's an identity, so before my book even came out I was getting emails that uh I'm anti-Salafi or I'm anti-Albani, and when I had some conversation with these people, they didn't even read the book yet uh already there was just this kind of um you know attack on just because of the the book itself.

Yeah. So I wonder if uh what your experience is like or do you think Salafis will view this book as a critique of the movement?

Yeah. So um I'd like to uh begin by stating that I am trying my best, my utmost best to avoid sectarianism as much as possible. And that's very difficult to do when the book is about a particular strand or interpretation. But I'm trying my best to do so. This is an academic work. It is not an emotional rant. It's not a critique. I actually started writing the book when I ascribed to the movement and viewed myself as a genuine bonafide follower of Ibia. And by the time the book was over, as I keep on saying, I've moved on. I'm not anti uh I have just moved on, as I'm sure we're going to talk about in the uh in this interview. So I don't wish to fan the flames of intramuslim hatred and sectarianism, and I have never once criticized my teachers, my alma matter. I have nothing but utmost respect uh for the people that I studied under, and I genuinely believe they are good and sincere uh people. Um that having been said, I have disagreements with certain interpretations of the movement, and so that is also present in the book as you correctly point out that um it is human nature. It's not just this movement; any movement that feels under pressure or critiqued, they will engage in a defense mechanism, and that is understandable. It's a human psychological phenomenon, and of the ways they do that is ad hominem, like they attack the person rather than the message, and you know this from your own. So it's not something unique to the Salafi movement. Uh whenever the obundi critiques the movement automatically they're like oh this wasn't a real bundi. He wasn't really a part of the movement. This is human nature. It's a defense mechanism. So I personally don't really get involved in ad hominem attacks and those who uh resort to that. Um they appeal to a certain demographics, a certain intellectual audience or you know that level of, and that's fine. It is what it is. I don't really engage with that. Uh but if anybody brings substantive critiques, critiques of the ideas, then let us engage and let us have a fruitful back and forth. I find it interesting that even before the book is is uh so even today, what's the day today? Yeah. So even today the book is not actually being shipped in America. Yeah. 15th July being shipped in America. It's available for pre-sale, but there already uh critiques uh from the American I saw that, and when you read them, it's obvious with utmost respect they haven't even read the book. They are creating a straw man argument that is not even mentioned and then refuting me, not even the ideas, and it is what it is. So uh I encourage everybody to have an open mind and read for yourself. I view myself as sympathetic to the movement even to this day. Even to this day, in spite of what the critics say, this movement has shaped me. I have lived and breathed and studied at its you know primary institute, and I have nothing but respect for the icons of the movement uh including Albani whom I've never met but I've listened to his live lecture live lectures by the way online and you know we have had conference calls with him back in the 90s. So I've had I've had that honor. I've studied with he wrote for me. I've met Ibaz multiple times including in his housebin multiple times including in his house uh you know and others. May Allah, you know, um, forgive those that have moved on and, uh, bless those that are alive. I have nothing but respect for them, but I don't agree with certain interpretations, and that's clear in the book. So, I, as you said, it is what it is. And, um, uh, I don't want to, you know, increase sectarianism. Nonetheless, we need to discuss academic issues, what is right and what is wrong to transcend personalities. And that's really one of the key points. And frankly, that's a very idea right transcends personalities. So let me remind my brethren uh that if they really are interested in in the truth, remove ideas, remove others, and let's talk about ideas as they exist, and that's that's the whole purpose.

Yeah, that's uh subhan Allah very interesting. Um, like myself uh growing up in uh you know New Jersey where there was a large Salafi movement uh especially on college campuses, there was always this tension between Salafism and other movements, and when you shift to academia, you see people studying this movement from the outside right, and someone like yourself who's uh in your book you mentioned that you went and you found yourself sitting knee to knee within uh you have this experience from the insider perspective right uh So a lot of the academic books uh on copism uh they're looking at it from a very uh political lens or security lens uh terrorism even the way they they define it right so the definitions out there on copism a lot of them are defining copism according to their political inclinations, one thing I found frustrating was uh this in particular because uh what makes someone a celi is not their political inclination or the way they dress or their gender interaction. ction. It's really their belief in the in theology, right? So what what is it that you know they often accuse the insider of being biased, but they they also lack something, right? Because they don't have 100%.

This is what motivated me to write the book, and it's mentioned in the introduction. This is exactly what motivated me. The frustration of stereotyping and caricaturing a movement that I knew far be better than any of these academics. And they're missing the point here. Uh and again let's go back 10 years ago when I was you know um in the last 10 years a number of good books have come out including your one uh but you know when I was in in in the academy when I was doing my PhD uh and then when I was teaching um at Rose College, it was so frustrating that I couldn't really find a decent book that surveys the movement and portrays it in a manner that forget sympathetic or hostile factually correct just it described the movement as is in a holistic manner rather than nitpick and create a stereotype that a Salafi himself would not recognize which is what bothered me at the time that I don't recognize what I'm reading here is not the movement that I studied and I'm I'm calling to at the time you know and so for me this was my main motivation believe it or not it was actually to to empathize and to demonstrate the reality of copism and and I say for the record that even though I have moved on uh had I still been a part of the movement Not much in the book would have changed. Sure, the epilogue and c certain paragraphs in the end, but by and large it is a factual description of the movement and and you've read the book, so you can I hope testify to that as well. It is simply an encyclopedic description, and that's what I wanted. I wanted my book to be an encyclopedic reference for the educated lay person that anybody who wants to know about this movement can get its history, its theology, its diversity, uh can get the movement globally how it's impacted and also you know the relationship of this movement with two other strands uh Islamic political Islam the brotherhood and jihadist militant strands al-Qaeda and ISIS and I am hopefully uh you know optimistic that inshallah this book will be a reference for I hope inshallah many decades to come but as with all writings there will always be updates and additions inshallah and nothing is perfect there must be minor mistakes and faults but I hope inshallah that it serves as a neutral academic reference for many decades to come.

Yeah, inshallah. Um I think it is, you know, when when when I was talking to you about my own book, um I know you were writing your PhD on Ibamia, and in the back of my mind, I was always thinking I wish someone like they would write a book on copism just because you had this insight, right? Uh so w with with the idea of copism I think when someone talks about this or someone thinks of copism what comes to mind is this model right of the Quran and the sunnah and following the salaf. Uh in my own work I found that subhah this is both the downside the appeal and the repulsion of the movement. Uh it's the appeal because it presents like a lot of confidence certainty. It's Islam with no baggage. Uh it empowers a lay person. um you know who would want to who would want to learn their religion through a person when they can just go directly to uh scripture at the same time it's also uh a little bit you know turns people away because uh there's always a person interpreting the Quran and Sunnah right when you say I follow Quran and Sunnah there's always a person interpreting that uh uh when I looked at the works for example of uh Albani uh he's a lot of his books if you look at the titles they are something like you know uh marriage according to the pure sunnah uh you know such and such according to it's it's kind of like pressing the reset button on Islam where whereas if you look at the works of someone liked uh he has 73 books and 55 of his books were commentaries on previous scholarship Albani has about 200 books and about 30 of them are um comment are commentaries right so just kind of is an indication of their um attitude toward towards previous tradition. So in your book you actually open the first chapter with a quote from Albani where he says the Salafi uh uh methodology is Islam as understood correctly. Uh why did you open with this and like what do you think about these slogans? Uh do they you know do they engage uh how can people engage more seriously than beyond slogans?

So every chapter of mine begins with uh two or three quotations that I believe are necessary uh you know to understand that particular chapter. And so I began my first chapter uh which is an overview of copism. If you don't read the whole book, at least read the first chapter. Then that will at least give you a bird's eye view with this this quote of Albani in order to illustrate how Salafi view Salafism, right? That for them is synonymous with true Islam. And therefore when you criticize Salafism in their eyes, you are criticizing the religion of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Right? So they have understood their interpretation not just to be a great one or an excellent one but rather the only correct interpretation. Right. And that of course has an appeal, but as you point out, it is also potentially quite dangerous because when you do not separate the humanihad from the divine revelation, then you fall prey to the very real and tangible repercussion which is disagreeing with a human's is interpreted as disagreeing with Allah and his messenger. Right. So as you correctly point out, and this is one of the reasons why I have politely moved on from the movement that the movement is definitely uh subject to cultural and social political influence, and we see this and the book has demonstrated this, but the the practitioner doesn't realize that, and the practitioner the end user is assuming that what he's hearing from a particular teacher particular sheh is not the sheh's interpretation; it is Allah's definitive command right, and somebody like Albani, and I say this with utmost love and respect uh facilitated in this uh you know paradigm and understanding, and as you point out his book uh you know one of his books which was one of the spearheading efforts to globalize the movement and that is you know right the prophet's prayer described as though you are seeing it this book I read it as a teenager 199 9192 when it first came out you know in the English language I was one of the first people to buy it from England I ordered it as a teenager and the book just mesmerizes you you know when you don't have any exposure to to when you are vaguely aware of the you know and you haven't studied them formally this book singlehandedly for a lay Muslim demolishes the need for mhabs you don't need the mhabs because the book has proven to you how to pray. And therefore, when you read this book and you believe that the Quran and Sunnah has an immediate direct response to any question that you have and that anybody who wants to go through a scholar or through a madhab is effectively replacing the Quran and Sunnah with the medhab. So then anybody who disagrees with your version of Islam is actually disagreeing with Allah and his messenger. Right. And of course it took from in my particular case just one year of studying in Medina. Just one year when you actually enter a seminary and enter and classes of to realize how superficial that understanding was. You know within the first semester of entering the rest of Medina I realized I needed to become a or at least study. you know, I realized that why do you think why do you think that um some you know you've studied you know quickly within one year a lot of people they'll go through this phase of copism right where uh especially in law at least you know they they'll kind of see through at least through the albani uh albani's type of viewing of the mhabs why do you think some people get stuck on this like they they they get stuck in this type of understanding so it is so of course the the school ibn hazam school there is some overlap with uh you know type understanding of but it's not exactly the same and there is an appeal there is a psychological empowerment to believe that this hadith that you find in a book can be extrapolated to you right here and now in this situation that you're in there is this direct authority that you believe exists and when that authority exists without a doubt it gives you a sense of empowerment a sense of prestige a sense of I'm following the prophet directly it takes takes either intellectual courage or a deep dive of understanding how operates to understand that this extrapolation from a textbook to you is a process a hermeneutics. There is an entire system called whether you know it or not it exists. Whether you think you're utilizing it or not, you are utilizing it. Right? Unfortunately, many in the movement don't quite understand that they are employing even as they deny there is no we're just taking it from the Quran and Sunnah. Right? And so I gave an example in another lecture I gave just a few months ago. I was uh one of the members of this movement came up to me in my mosque and they're like what is uh you know what is the ruling on 401k and zakat and I said well this scholar says this scholar says this and you know why you know and he's like what does the Quran and sunnah say tell me what the prophetam said you know and I just looked at the this is an educated brother older than me in age and of course he's a part of the movement I said do you really think the prophet told you specifically about 401k and zakat on 401k. I mean, do you really expect that it's just a simple extrapolation that inki hadith number 3,200 this is what the prophet said 401k there's a hermeneutics that has to be done and when you do that you realize the answer is not crystal clear black and white you have to go through ani process right and in that you humble yourself to the fact that you know what there are shades of gray here there's different interpretations and that nuance is lost on many who appe who are who are following or whom the slogan appeals to follow the Quran upon the of the and that is a nice sounding slogan but when you unpack it you realize that is more of a slogan than an actual replacement for and as I mentioned in the book what happens when you follow the slogan is you effectively substitute one group of scholars for another because who gets to interpret what the Quran and Sunnah and the say about a particular issue. Who gets to interpret that? In the end of the day, it is authority of scholarship and the Salafi movement by and large then follows a group of scholars whom they assume that what they say is what the Salaf said but that is an assumption and it's not usually the case and I have many examples in the book and even in my daily life and I'm going over this over and over again. What did the Salv say about participating in American politics? Mhm. quote me one of the what did the say about you know living as a citizen in America you know what did the say about you know global issues and what not

Or you know what should the Palestinian brothers and sisters do right now? These are slogans now. Scholars have verdicts; that verdict doesn't mean Allah and His messenger, much less the Salaf, are actually saying what they say. And this is a, a, a, a, you know, polite mechanism, or a polite, you know, um, uh, uh, food for thought for those who follow the movement, is to differentiate between the scholars whom they respect and between, firstly, the divine, which is the Quran, and then, you know, the prophetic model that Allah told us to follow, and then also even the actual Salaf, which is another unpacking. Because to be more precise, when you say “the Salaf” more often than not, and this is a technical point, you are constructing an imaginary image, and you are assuming the entirety of the Salaf felt exactly the way you feel. Yeah. And that is something that it took me also a number of years to come to terms with; that when you say “the Salaf said,” “the Salaf did,” usually, usually you are selectively picking some people within the first three generations and then extrapolating the rest of them also believed in it, ignoring differences of opinion, right, and then applying it to your particular context and situation. So once again, there is a construction of an ideal, call it a Platonic ideal even, a construction of an idea and an extrapolation and a back projection. Usually the Salaf had many opinions about issues, right? And to claim that one particular scholar represents the entirety of the Salaf is a bit of a stretch.

Now, sometimes I agree with you. Yes. When there’s consensus, there’s ijma. But when there’s consensus, that’s actually very rare, but when ijma exists, okay, we will follow; no problem. Yeah. Yeah. I think this is something that is uh really interesting. Like, um, myself, like if you if you read books written by a lot of Salafis, they approach scripture as though it’s law itself. Right. So there’s sometimes uh you’ll read a book and it has minimal uh uh commentary, almost entirely just verses in hadith that are um that they think just speak for themselves. I even attended, you know, in one place where uh the speaker will only, will not mention a single word from himself, only a hadith on a specific topic. Uh, again, assuming that these things just kind of speak from the self and the person has the tools to kind of understand and uh interpret them. And then the the the, like even even that term itself, as you point out, is a very loaded term; there the Salaf are diverse, they’re not monolithic; there is that kind of picking and choosing uh from there.

However, you know, I think at the same time, like Salafism and this kind of um movement didn’t grow out of a vacuum. You have traditionalists who were kind of um out of touch, right? You have the fall of the caliphate. People are looking for an answer. So the traditionalists, a lot of them are out of touch, unable to answer, you know, the problems of modernity. Uh, they see the West advancing. They see secularism rising. So a lot of them kind of just uh want some, want an answer and want something simplistic. And you have someone like Sheikh Albani who comes and, you know, he he’s kind of, he’s kind of like burning down the institution, saying, “Forget all of this, you know, I’m going to uh, you know, if I can use the term, almost like drain the swamp and, you know, bring bring us back to the origins,” right? And despite all the push back against him, he had, you know, hundreds of books written against him by scholars from all over the world, even from within Salafism itself. Despite all of this, uh his slogans and his popularity grew. Uh, and I have my own ideas of why this is, but I’d like to hear um, you know, your thoughts on why why he was so influential. Excellent.

So, uh, you bring up a good point, and that is that all of these movements, they they don’t come from a vacuum. And if I wanted to, I could also, you know, gently critique every single strand of Islam that is, you know, I’m aware of, that in my analysis and opinion. And of course, this is an opinion. I don’t believe any one strand is inherently divine, and there’s good and there’s bad in all strands of Islam, because in the end of the day, to extrapolate from the Quran and from the Sunnah and the Salaf is a human project, and so I do not believe that a group of scholars is the end all and be all, whether they’re whether they’re whether they’re whether they’re Jamaat Islami, whether they’re, you know, whatever it might be, these are human beings, and the Salaf are no different. So that’s a very valid point; I want to make sure that people understand that when politely pointing out my disagreements with the movement, it is not something personal, that only this one movement. I actually have positives and negatives out of all of the movements of Islam, and Salafism has many positives of them. The empowering of the Quran and Sunnah and the the the the direct access that you read books of hadith more than any other movement, and that is a positive, right? Read directly the source books more than any other movement.

Now you asked a very deep question, and that is: Albani seems to have almost single-handedly created a global understanding of Salafism that was unique to him. And of course, I did not know it when I joined the movement, because I joined because of Albani’s cassettes and writings, right, as a teenager in America, in Houston; it’s like, can you believe, not even speaking Arabic, right, not even reading Arabic? I was swept by the wave of Salafism that the Western world saw in the early 90s. I was one of the first people that, you know, jumped on the bandwagon, as the saying goes, and it wasn’t because of, it was because of, even though I’d heard the name, it was because of Albani, and I am a product of that sweeping away. It took me, as I said, just a semester of actually studying the original books to understand that, you know, uh, with utmost respect, Albani’s understanding was different than mainstream Salafism, right? And I’ll never forget, actually, that uh, and this is actually an anecdote I don’t I don’t think I’ve mentioned this um before, but uh I met him multiple times, and alhamdulillah I studied with him, as I said, wrote a hadith for me. One of the first lectures I attended of his, this was I heard it myself; this was something I heard, cuz he would come to Medina back in the mid-’90s. He would come fairly often, at least twice or thrice a year. So, and he would always have a session with the students. He would always have—the students loved him, right? And one of the first lectures, no, in fact, the first visit of his, he was in our masjid of the Medina University, Jamia. And as you’re aware, Salafism and Albani Salafism was extremely popular in Medina. And you also had Hanbalism, which was anti-Albanism, right? So you had like, you know, people who weren’t happy with Albani’s and whatnot. So a question was asked to him—this is 199, 1995 if I’m not mistaken—and I was present in the audience. So this is—I’m there, I’m listening to this myself—which was about Salafism versus Hanbalism, but it wasn’t by names. The question was: some people are saying that to pray 20 is a bid’ah, and that you should leave after eight. Pause here for those who don’t know. So Albani was adamant that Witr is only eight, right? And anybody who prays more than eight is doing a bid’ah, and you should leave after eight if they are doing more than eight, right? And that was his position that his students would follow, and I would see this all the time; like I would literally see people in Medina after eight stand up and walk away. Yeah. People do until this day, I mean here in America. Yeah, yeah. It’s it’s like that’s his fatwa; that is. So in the masjid, I was here, there in the audience. So this is not something I heard third party. This is my own experience, and this is one of my first impressions of realizing, whoa, the movement is not as monolithic as I thought it was, right? Because this is my first semester in Medina, 1995, first semester, and I and I think it is the first lecture I heard from him live, if I’m not mistaken. Um, if it’s not the first, it’s the second, like the first. So just to be clear, because my critics love to point out, I have to be careful, bro; like literally, if I say, “Well, it’s actually not blue,” I have to be so careful. Allah protect me. But anyway, the overzealousness makes it a bit difficult to even speak without disclaimers. Albani said directly, and I quote him to the best of my memory, and you can go and listen to that audio, Subhan Allah. And when he said this as a new student who didn’t know the differences between Salafi strands, this shocked me to my core. Wow. Subhan Allah. To hear—and everybody knows who’s being referenced because we know the Medina climate, we know the Jamia student body, right, the students, and we know this is one of the big issues of discussion in that era, because again, this is innocent era, pre-9/11, pre-the Iraq war; they were obsessed with these issues: the length of the beard, is the Witr obligatory, and you know, so they had these five, ten issues that everybody was discussing at the time; Witr was one of them. So everybody, everybody understood Albani is alive. Is alive. Everybody knows this is about the two of them. Yes. And everyone knows this is Albani being referenced. We we understand this, right? And he was and he was saying this with calm and pause and knowing what he is saying. Whoever says praying more than eight is a bid’ah is himself innovating because nobody in Islamic history ever said this. And then he went on and he proved that, listen, whether you pray four or eight or 50 or 100, whatever, like it doesn’t matter, it’s a salah; there is no bid’ah in this; this doesn’t come from. And he went on to prove his point, but my—put yourself in my shoes here, right? Freshmen who’s never understood at that time that Salafism is a vast strand; it it changes within itself; the spectrum is extremely vast, politically, methodologically, even theologically. So this was my introduction to the fact that his interpretations and understandings are, you know, with respect, they are a minority and atypical, and they seem to ignore a millennia of scholarship and even basic usul, but it appeals because he quotes you, “Oh, he prayed like this.” And if you don’t know, if you don’t understand the fact that he prayed like this is not an indication—it’s just maximum you can derive is max you can derive—but you haven’t, you don’t know his is at the time. So when you hear a person like Albani or that type of style, it makes you believe that the Sunnah is exactly what you interpret it to be because you don’t even know the hermeneutics of interpretation. Right.

Uh, to answer your question: why do I think Albani appealed to uh the people? I think it’s obvious that it is as if it is as if Albani was removing himself from the picture and bringing in the Prophet directly to you. Yeah. Now obviously that is not correct factually, but the illusion was there. Mhm. And so when you feel that the Prophet is telling you directly, “You must pray like this.” When you feel the Prophet prayed exactly how he prayed, he put his hand over here, he put his hand there, he did this, he moved his finger this way. And you don’t know that other opinions have the same level of evidences and they have the same sources, but they’re just interpreting it differently. The assumption is: the Prophet is directly my role model. You cut off all the middlemen, right? And you don’t even realize it’s an assumption. You don’t even realize there are actually other middlemen, but you don’t even realize it. I think this—now I say this is not attempting to be a deceiver; I say this loudly and clearly—I firmly believe one of the causes for Albani’s acceptance was his sincerity. I say this at a spiritual level: that Allah does not bless the da’wah of people who are not sincere. Mhm. And so I do not ever question the sincerity of him or any of my teachers. Yeah. I have no doubt, inshallah, that one of the causes of his success was that he genuinely believed that he was following the prophetic model and reviving the love of the Prophet’s Sunnah. So these two things: number one, the simplistic uh assumption that the Prophet is speaking to you directly, and so there’s an empowerment and an attachment; and number two, the fact that he is so convinced of his own ideology. He was sincere, and sincerity generates sincerity. Sincerity brings about sincerity. So when he’s so passionate and sincere, and you have listened to his lectures much more than I have. I used to listen to that day and night. I haven’t told this to a lot of people, but everyone those who know me back in the day in the ’90s, that’s what I did. That was my world. You know, getting all those cassettes, you know, those cassette—I don’t—I have all of them. You have all of them, right? Yeah. Well, I actually I actually had the cassettes. There was no MP3. I I had, you know, used to purchase them whenever, and this was live. It would come out every few weeks. It would come like he would give a lecture in Jordan, and within a week it would be mass-produced in Houston, Texas. Can you believe? Yeah. Yeah. I actually have some that aren’t um from Jordan, the actual cassettes that haven’t been um—I I’ve listened to a lot of his stuff online. I haven’t heard them anywhere online, but yeah, like you said, he spread them all over the place; like within a week they are um, you know, all over the world, and everyone is um, you know, listening and following along. Uh uh, to—so this is a third cause of his success, by the way: that utilization of modern technology uh which at the time was cassette player, and you know, people would, you know, ship them; there was a particular, you know, uh, you know, Albani follower in Houston; we would get cassettes from him, you know, uh and and he would mass distribute them and sell them for $2, $3, like relatively cheap, you know, like almost cost price, because they want to be effective. So the utilization of modern technology. May I add a fourth one: and that is the eloquence of his speech and the style of his delivery. Anybody who listens to Albani uh cannot help but be captivated by his his his usage of, you know, the way that he spoke and the the the passion with which he spoke with. I think that was definitely—and every successful leader has to be a passionate and eloquent speaker. Yeah, he was also charismatic; charismatic. Yeah. Also, he presented his argument also in a very logical way. He would he would present it as though he’s, you know, reasoning and log, you know, using logic to go through uh his answers. You know, I when I look at uh Albani, I also wonder if with time uh if his—maybe maybe he didn’t say it explicitly, but if his understanding of things like the Takfir have changed as he aged, right? So early on, earlier on in his life, you see a lot of anti-takfir, anti-khariji statements, some—and in in some cases he likened takfir to a necessity of eating pork. He says it’s only allowed when, you know, similar to pork, you know, like like that. But later on his life he kind of softened on this topic where he said, right, he says takfir must be done. Uh, and I wonder if this is just, you know, with age and time and uh maturing that he himself may have seen that this is not as black and as white as he himself viewed when he was younger. Right. So you’re the PhD expert on Albani. Your PhD is on Albani. Uh, so I will uh uh and and what you are saying uh it does resonate with me as well. When you read his earlier statements and when you read the introduction of Silsilah al-Ahadith al-Da’ifa, which is the destruction of the weak hadith, right? Like an all-out, like complete guns ablaze, like nothing—obliteration—you read that introduction and you see the appeal of Salafism, right? Without knowing the history of the madhhabs, it’s as if the madhhabs are meant to compete with the Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And that’s a completely false construction of the madhhabs; that all of the madhhabs are based upon the Sunnah, and Albani himself is another madhhab competing with the four madhhabs. But that’s—you don’t know that when you read the book. Exactly. Yeah. That’s the problem here.

Whether you like it or not, anybody who quotes the Quran and Sunnah is essentially creating a madhhab or forming a madhhab or following a madhhab. Yeah. To believe that the Quran and Sunnah is speaking to a particular issue, extrapolating a particular verdict, right, there is absolutely—so you need to understand this, and the only way to understand this is either, as we said, you study it yourself, you know, or somebody explains it to you like we’re trying to do now, where there is always a human interpreter. And when you say, “I’m going to follow the Quran and Sunnah,” what you’re basically saying is: “I’m going to ignore established schools that have a thousand years of scholarship, and I’m going to follow somebody else who thinks that they have a direct access, you know, and their interpretation, which I believe is not their interpretation; it is actually what Allah is himself intended.” And of course, that is essentially—there’s no escape, right? There’s no escape from following the interpretation of other people; there’s no escape. We do this all the time, and that’s how life is. The only way is if you yourself study and follow, you know, your own—so the example I give is: I’m not a medical doctor. I’m not an MD, and I have to follow experts when it comes to medical diagnosis. I have no right to then open up the, you know, different opinions of the doctors and say which one I think is stronger or not. It’s not my forte. I haven’t been trained. I cannot study. I have to resort to—and in this case would be—use my better judgment: which doctor seems to have the greatest credentials and seems to make the most sense in my limited understanding. It’s really that simple. I can’t do more than this, and I have to do similarly in Islamic sciences; the lay person must do—or else study the sciences and understand why—then you can make a more educated—or else study for 20, 30 years and then you become a mujtahid, and you don’t need to make taqlid. Otherwise, there’s no alternative. Yeah.

And and I think one of the uh uh contributions of Sheikh Albani, which I kind of argue in my book, is that he also single-handedly revived the interest in the science of hadith. So if we look at works in the early 1900s, a lot of scholars were quoting a hadith in their books without really citing them or mentioning their grading, or even just his neatness, like the way he would uh neatly cite a hadith on the bottom of the text, his indexing. And his critic, Fatuh al-Rahman, actually noted this. He he didn’t say it about Albani, but he was complaining that a lot of scholars, they’ll quote a hadith, and he was saying, “If you look at orientalists, their works are very well cited, very clean,” and he’s like, “We Muslims are not doing that, right?” But Sheikh Albani is actually someone who revived interest in the study of hadith; even his critics were kind of forced to go back and hit the books, even if only to uh uh refute him. And I actually I actually mention this in my book explicitly; I actually say that, you know, um one of the contributions of Albani is that uh the the um sciences of hadith, the interest in them was regenerated all over again, and the grading of hadith. So Albani would always give his own verdict on the hadith. Right. His critics were forced to up their game. Exactly. And his critics, even as they refuted him, began referencing volume number, page number, edition which he used to do, and then bringing in the quotations, “Said it is said, it is said.” So they don’t want they don’t want to use his critics. So they bring other authorities, but they are bringing in authorities, right? And again, this is without a doubt, this is undeniable. Nobody can deny this: that he single-handedly reintroduced the passion, the sciences, the classifications, and the uh uh the uh the referencing of hadith that nobody else had done. And this really shows you the impact that he had not just on the movement but actually upon the entirety of Muslim movements. In fact, Albani generated responses to him from so many other schools that actually forced themselves to raise the bar. So, for example, I have a book, I can see it from here, uh um where uh one of the uh the the scholars of England uh wrote a book, you know, um the the Prophet’s prayer described, you know, according to the Hanafi school. Okay. And the book is basically a template taken from Albani but on the Hanafi madhhab in which he does the exact same thing but he’s going through the Hanafi school, but he’s not saying Abu Hanifa said; he’s not saying, you know—

We said he's not saying he's actually going back to the sunnah and referencing every single so if you were to read this book right, you would actually see the impact of Onfi scholarship. And another book written, another you see that it's a modern book, but it is not based upon the of Abu Hanif and Abu Ysef or whatnot; it is based upon hadith after hadith after hadith and it's a rationalization attempt to defend. Interesting. Yeah, yeah.

So just for the sake of time, I want to kind of shift to um North America or at least, you know, maybe post-Albani. Uh, honestly, for the listener, one of the uh things that does really well in the book is kind of connect the dots, right, between different movements and people and ideas. And uh one thing you actually do that I really enjoy is how you show how an idea shifted from one person or one school carried by another. Um, you know, tracing this intellectual history and growth. And uh for me as an American Muslim growing up in America, I kind of was familiar with a lot of these organizations and names you're talking about. But uh in the section on North American Salafism, you do um connect the dots between the 1960s MSAs uh then to, you know, uh individuals like Dr. Bal Phillips, uh Jamaluddin Zarabo, the Quran and Sunnah Society, AMJA, Alb, all the way to the Yaqeen Institute, right? And you show how, you know, the the Salafism has grown and changed with time.

Uh, where do you see Salafism um you know, moving forward in the American context? That's a very awkward question because without a doubt that's going to be perceived as a critique or an attack. Uh, all of these figures having an academic discussion, you know, and I think yes, I know, but it's difficult to, you know, you have to understand it's also personal. These institutions, the individuals you mentioned, yes, I am on, I used to be on personal relationships with all of them, right? And I have been influenced by them. I used to be a part of many of them, or actually all of them, actually all the ones you mentioned, all of them for 50 years. Uh, and AMJA is a great institution. I attend whenever I can. I'm actually presenting this year's AMJA, and they're a great institution. I praise them in the book as a as a sign of, you know, academic uh Salafism that is trying to be relevant, you know, in in modern times. This is a very praiseworthy uh development, uh and I'm very happy at that.

Um, so if you define Salafism to mean restricting itself to a particular theological interpretation of the attributes, restricting itself to a particular interpretation of, restricting itself to a particular interpretation of, I do think politely and respectfully that the movement has seen its heyday in the 90s and that it has been on the decline and it shall remain on the decline for the foreseeable future. And even though there has been, you see as a positive or a negative, that's a very difficult question to answer. The movement has its positives and it also has some quite severe negatives. Mhm. And therefore weighing those positives and negatives, and this is the case with all, yeah, fundamentalist movements who wish to reference modernity by always going back to the past. I don't agree with this mindset anymore. So when I critique in this regard, the same critiques can apply to the A’bundism. The same critiques can apply to Sufism, to the what is called the traditionalism branch of Islam, which is I don't think is very traditional. It's also a construct. Right? So when I critique in this regard, I need to make it clear, it's not singling out this one movement. But I believe that firstly because I was a part of the movement, I'm better aware of it. And secondly, because I used to preach and teach it and I had some ownership, I do have a bit more responsibility than to then also point out some of the negatives, and I respectfully ask other strands and other movements to do the same. We want to maximize the positive of all the strands and minimize the negative.

One of my biggest complaints of the movement, even when I was a part of it, is that the movement generates a lot of division within Muslim circles. And I attempted when I was a part of the movement to minimize that division. But I realized that with its understandings of Tawhid, and it is almost impossible to fully overcome division within the Ummah because once you have defined the way that they have defined it, then large segments of the Ummah automatically are guilty of. Mhm. And this was for me the catalyst that eventually caused me to move on from the movement.

What about like the the fact that um, you know, the types of debates they're engaging in aren't really? So this was my point number two. Go ahead. So point number one was their definitions of Tawhid and are excellent academic definitions, and we can and we should discuss them. But the repercussions of those definitions are not academic anymore. The repercussions are that the bulk of the Ummah are misguided. Not just minor, seriously misguided. So when you come to this conclusion, then automatically emotionally and theologically you will prioritize this over many other aspects and you will think that this is the most noble thing to do is to warn against and to warn against, not realizing that's your definition of Tawhid and that too is contested. The person you're warning against has a different definition of Tawhid and of Shirk which actually is academically also sound. Which one is the more sound? I've discussed this in my 3-hour long lecture on the Tawhid, you can listen to it, and I've discussed the real the reality of Tawhid in multiple lectures and I've gone over the academic arguments. For now, let us just keep it at this way that with respect to my ex-colleagues and friends to this day, understand your passion for Tawhid is no more or no less than the passion of the person you're refuting. That person also loves Tawhid. Yeah. And that person also loves and hates, but their definitions are different than yours. So humble yourself to this reality and spend some time if you wish to do this studying their definitions and understanding why their definitions are different than yours. That's my first point.

The second point that you're bringing up is that, and this is not just a problem with Salafism. Yeah. This is a problem with all fundamentalist movements, is that they are taught to prioritize what they are studying in their madrasas. So their graduates come out having mastered disciplines studied in the madrasas, the curriculums of which have hardly changed for the last hundreds of years. And so their graduates come out and the people they're preaching to are teenagers in your New Jersey high school. Yeah. College kids in Rutgers in, you know, UTD in in in the MSA. And the questions that these youth are bringing are completely disconnected from the traditional seminary trainings of all mainstream versions of Islam. And there is a therefore massive disconnect between the lived reality of the bulk of the western Ummah and the seminary trainings that groups come back with, and this disconnect and divide is not just among Salafis. So what happens is many graduates don't know what else to do other than to preach the controversies and the methodologies that they were taught in their seminaries. So they come back prioritizing what the seminary prioritized, and of the simplest example is the Sifat controversy, which I have spoken about in a lot of detail in my library chats and I gave a recent interview which there was a lot of backlash to a phrase that I said here there and I I agree that the phrase should have been explained, maybe in a future library chat I'll explain it, but uh I do stand by the gist of what I was trying to convey, even if the wording needed more explanation, and that is the Sifat controversy is blown out of proportion. We don't really have a, there's not much benefit to reinterpreting this way or that way. The Ummah needs to move beyond these. Understand there are philosophies out there. Understand there has been disagreement. The graduate students study the disagreements. Choose one discipline. But the average, not just the average, 99% of the modern Ummah does not need to be taught advanced and who said what and why did they say this? And yet and especially in light of the Gaza situation, especially in light of Islamophobia, especially in light of the losing of the Islamic identity, the high rates of, the high rates of divorce, and online as we speak and are having it out right now online about the meaning of you guys and you guys and whatnot. Somebody has to call out the emperor's nakedness. And this is the emperor's nakedness. All of you are incorrect in your prioritizing this issue. Go ahead, bring the advanced students, take them in a room, lock the door, and hash it out, debate it, go over all of the stuff in the past. And believe me, when you do so, I will love to be in that room, and I will love to share my ideas with you and have a back and forth. But when we finish and unlock the door, let's all go and pray together. Or one Ummah, and what unites us is much more than what divides us. And then when we go to our respective Manab preaching and teaching, let us keep our classroom discussions in the classroom, the congregation in the Masjids, the high school MSAs, the, you the campuses, they don't need to hear of the different meanings of. It is absolutely irrelevant to the modern Muslim situation. This is my critique not just of Salafism but of all mainstream fundamentalist movements: solve the problems of our times, our youth. And I said this at the AMJA conference. Maybe you were there, that I think you were there. I said this at the AMJA conference. It created a bit of a back and forth. I said this as you guys are debating over the Sifat of Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala, your own children are debating over the Wujud of Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala. And as you're debating whether the Sunnah, or your children are debating whether the Prophet is a role model or not because of ethical issues that you know I don't want to get into here, but you know ethical issues this year, right? The the the disconnect between so many of our scholars and between the problems of the Ummah, and as I have said for the last year and a half now, one thing has done for me is I've dropped political correctness. I I don't have the patience, let the critics criticize. Allah is the judge in the Akhira and in this world His believers are the wall. I say this not for fame or anything but because the political correctness has dropped and it needs to be said. All fundamentalist movements have demonstrated their failure in effectively mobilizing the Ummah for the good of the Ummah. I say this bluntly. All of these movements without exception, what have we done for? Here you are talking about your respective, it's a shame, and I don't want to start getting emotional, it's a shame a billion people and we cannot do anything and we don't even have solutions, and I am guilty like everybody else, I don't have solutions, but if one thing is demonstrated it is that neither Salafism nor traditionalism nor Sufism nor the A’bund nor Jama’at, we haven't had an effective plan. We've all failed in this regard. So if we realize this, let us humble ourselves. All of these movements are human movements, including Salafism. Yeah. And they change over time. This book demonstrates it. Go read the book. Salafism of a 100 years ago, of a thousand years ago, was not the Salafism of today. Even the Salafism of today, with utmost respect to my critics of the movement, every one of you knows you are a part of one particular interpretation of the movement. And you don't like the Salafis to the left of you. You don't like the Salafis to the right of you. You have decided in that in that spectrum of Salafism where you're going to be and you have demarcated this is the real Salafism. And within the movement as we all know politically, methodologically, theologically there's an entire spectrum. What gives you the right to say my particular interpretation is the only right one? No. Salafism and all movements are human products because that is what movements are. We go with the time, with the shape, and there's nothing wrong with that. When I point this out, I'm also a product of my time and place. The only issue comes, stop pretending or assuming that your interpretation or your teacher's interpretation is what Allah and His messenger have said. Humble yourself to what the Prophet himself said when he sent the Sahaba to go judge in that famous arbitration. He said if they want you to judge by the commandment of Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala, do not do so because you don't know the commandment of Allah, rather you say you will judge to the best of your ability and knowledge. This is what I'm asking all mainstream movements to follow. I want, I I am not asking anybody to leave their mainstream movements. Sufi, remain upon your, remain your, understand is your attempt to reach Allah's pleasure, and if you follow your, of your particular understanding, you have passed the salvational level. Then understand the other mainstream groups that are praying five times a day, facing the Qibla, doing wudu, wanting to follow the Quran and Sunnah. The Salafis also believe in it. The Sufis also believe in it. The A’bundis also believe in it. The Islamis also believe in it. Right.

I I'm I'm hearing, um, I could just be projecting this onto you, but um I'm hearing hearing hearing a lot of similarities to things or his approach to, uh, yeah, I I when when she passed away I gave a lecture in my Masjid, you could listen to it and I said that um uh in the beginning of my uh Islamic studies, may Allah forgive me, may Allah forgive me, I didn't respect that much, I mean didn't disrespect him. I just didn't respect him. I just I I respected at the beginning phase and then I respected my icons as the main role models that I had in in and in theology. And it took me years of preaching and teaching amongst the masses to actually begin to admire Kawthar with a new admiration. And Alhamdulillah Allah blessed me to visit him.

What is that? What was that that made you have that shift? So when you interact with the Muslim masses daily, preaching and teaching and interact with people outside of your bubble, and this is one of the things that unfortunately many of the ultra-traditionalists of all strands don't do. Many of the icons of their movements surround themselves with their acolytes, preach in their Masjids. Yeah. Give Durs to those that want to attend their lectures. And so they formulate a self, you know, of a a small community self-validating. When I came back in from Medina 2005, if I I don't know how old you are or if you remember, but post-911, the entire Dawah scene was disrupted, right? Masjids were shut down. Many people were deported. You I don't know how you remember, instant shut down, right? And Allah blessed me to just be walking into a vacuum. It wasn't something planned. And because of that vacuum, I had to be far more active than I should have been or could have been. I was too young at the time even. But it, there's always good in this. The fact that I was traveling and preaching at a national level because of that vacuum, I was sucked up. I'll be honest, more than I deserved. I still am not, I should, I don't deserve what you know is happening right now with my fame. I don't deserve this. I agree with this. But the the the reality was that there was nobody else doing anything and my preaching and teaching just reached more and more and more audiences. You were attending some of those lectures as well. Yes. So you also attended, you understand that. So in that you start broadening your horizon, interacting with larger demographics. So throughout my Medina phase, I had never actually sat down one-on-one with a Sufi scholar and expressed my ideas and doubts back and forth because we are taught. Mhm. Because of what we are taught. 2005 and six when I came back, I interacted for the very first time with the icons of traditionalist Islam and you know their names and you know no need to mention them, right? And I expressed my concerns. I interacted with them. I sat with them. Uh and I began to realize the caricatures I had formed were a little bit simplistic. So that conversation leads to more and more and more. Then in 2007 uh the pledge of mutual respect was given which you can log on to Muslim Matters and read about it and the backlash that it caused and everything. But that was a token to come together, right? And then as you interact more and more you realize actually and and that like I said for me personally uh this was the issue like I am being taught that this movement is guilty of Shirk and major Bid’ah and I don't sense that from them at all and I don't get it and I had to then go back to the definitions and where they come from and their definitions and where they come from and in the process views as well. You cannot preach a version of Islam that only 1% of the Ummah follow. Something is wrong with you then because the religion of Islam is meant to be lived by the average Muslim. And when you are saying something or giving a fatwa that nobody follows and cannot follow, something is wrong because Islam is a lived religion. And this is something that himself mentions that you need to look at the context of the fatwa and not just the letter of the fatwa. Right? And I have to mention one thing as well. um one of the icons of the Salafi movement because when I came I was obviously very much Salafi, very much I mean I was I I I viewed myself as as somebody who has to spread the ideas of, by the way when I came back it was more I’badah than even at that stage, now it's much more than like I’badah now is a different understanding that I have, but I met a scholar that all the Salafis are aware of uh he used to live here in um America when 911 happened and then he moved back the year after 911. He's one of the Kibār. Now I don't want to mention his name because he's currently in jail. So that might cause issues for anybody or whatnot, right? But he is a highly respected icon of Salafism. A lot of people don't know he lived in America for almost a decade but because of 911 then you know he was asked to leave. So he was a professor at the you know the Mahad in the Yes. Yeah. In Virginia. Yeah. So he is one of the big icons and he is the nephew of one of the, so given enough away you can figure out. Yeah. He knew me personally and we interacted multiple times. Uh in 2006 I met him in London because he couldn't come to America. I met him in London before he was put in jail. And I said to him, Sheikh, I'm having major problems with re-understanding from what I was taught to what I need to teach to the people. And I'm realizing that many of the fatwas that I think I thought were the theoretically are not practical realistically. I now see this and I'm like opening up to him and he says he he called me, I shouldn't deserve, he said to me, do you realize when I came to America the fatwas I gave I changed the majority of them by the time I was leaving the country and I'm embarrassed at what I used to say. This is a guy that was a professor at Mhm. Mhm. He was one of the icons of Salafism before he was put where he is now. Yeah. This is a big shot. Every person knows his name by the way. I just don't want to say because of whatnot. And he said to me, "It's embarrassing to me." He said, "The fatwas I used to give in the beginning versus what I am giving, what I gave right before I left." I said, "So Sheikh, if five years or seven years living in America caused you to change so many fatwas, what then do you think of people born and raised in the country, they hear you fatwa, they know it doesn't make any sense, right?" And that's when I began to realize that understanding of Islam was actually far more in line with what I'm trying to achieve without and and here's the irony. I had studied quite thoroughly in Medina phase to kind of sort of gently refute him, and again I'll be for the record I was never disrespectful of him Alhamdulillah, but I didn't respect it. I just thought and this is the standard understanding, he's watering the Deen down, right? That was my presumption and of course you understand this is a very simplistic analysis. Our assumption is the Deen is already overly strict, so when comes and makes it practical because we made the Deen all the way here, we think he's watering it down. What if we were to flip the script and say actually we had been making the religion overly strict? What if we had been problematizing?

Yeah. And what if Allah subhana wa ta'ala actually wants ease for us? And of course, I don't need to quote you the Quran and Sunnah because that's exactly what the Quran and Sunnah says; this is the norm. And when you start realizing this, all of a sudden I had to reread Shehardawi, but not as a critic, but rather as an admirer. And I began to realize, subhan Allah, this is what I have been wanting to say, and he's already proven and shown it without, you know, he's already there. And this caused me to have a new love for him. Alhamdulillah, I was able to visit and tell him this story, and visit him and explain to him and ask him some questions. And alhamdulillah it was, you know, a great honor to interact with him a few times.

But um, this is why that experience teaches you what books don't teach you. Experience teaches you what books don't teach you. And I realized preaching and teaching to the greater ummah and getting out of my comfort zone, getting out of my bubble, getting out of my own prescribed because again, you are taught these are these are this; these are that. Well, if you're going to live amongst the same 10 people, don't be surprised when you never change your views. Right? So this is why I changed my perception of Kaldawi, and I do believe him to be a great mujadid, that even though we have to agree to disagree on issues, but yes, for me, Shehardawi, uh, and also these are the two people that I admire the most and I view them to be as role models for me.

Subhanallah, this is uh really beautiful, you know, just to um hear from you that your own growth, and I think a lot of us go through that similar growth, right? At least for myself, um I went through a similar thing um, you know, with Kawi early on in my life, just kind of viewing him as just going based on what I heard people calling him a liberal, um, you know, watering down the dean and so on. There's one thing I read in your book that actually uh made me a little sad, uh which was um you don't name the person, but you do say that there's one of your mentors who now doesn't say salam to you, right? Who will or who will just say salam and kind of leave it at that. I don't want to get into that, but um unless I'm misunderstanding, but I think this is this is where the problem kind of starts, right? When you don't have that contextualizing or mixing with people or communication with those who differ with you, this is where you have these kind of everyone living in their own bubble, right?

Yes. It is actually very painful for me. It has caused me a lot of personal grief because uh this is a person that I still admire and love immensely, and I owe so much to him. Uh, he inspired me to love Islam—sorry, to love academic Islam; obviously my parents inspired me to love Islam, alhamdulillah—but he inspired me; he was one of my main mentors uh of the movement in the North American scene, uh and he's still active in his own uh small circles because again, from their worldview, from their worldview, they're only interested in quality, right? They and for them to to bring other people or whatnot. So again, I I still interact with him, but uh yeah, in in his worldview or in his understanding, uh because he knows me so well, there is no excuse for me having deviated; right, the irony of ironies, and I I say this all the time, none of my views are that eccentric, none of them.

So let me let me jump in here to my I guess just for the sake of time, my last question, uh which is going to come to your views, right? Um, you end the book uh uh very uh with a very beautiful quote by from Muhammad Ali where he says something along the lines of uh a person who views the world the same at at 20 as he does when he's 50, kind of wasted 30 years of his life. And in the book, you also mentioned that you haven't completely abandoned copism, that you've just shifted over a few degrees. So, uh can you like kind of just tell us what you've kind of taken or you've kept from copism and what you've kind of changed because there is if someone does a Google search of you, it seems like you've completely abandoned copism just from, you know, titles out there.

Yeah. I mean obviously these titles are not coming from me. These are coming from the critics. Yeah. Uh and of course, as I said, it is psychologically understandable when a person who was associated with the movement leaves the movement. The people with the movement have no option but to go ad hominem, you know, or to boycott, as in the case of the previous, like they think it is better. Uh I don't, as I said, I don't view myself uh as being antagonistic to the movement at all. Rather the reason why I say I moved on is because I have now understood that all movements, as I have explained, are products of their time and place, that there's variety within all strands, and therefore I haven't left for Salafism; I haven't left for al-Azhar; I haven't left, you know, Abduh for, you know, if I had switched over then you could at least say this. I have moved on from carrying a card to any club of exclusivity, and the only card I want to carry is the card of the messenger sallallahu alaihi wasallam. I'm his ummah. Right? So I don't view myself as obliged to go back to another group of scholars to interpret the deen. It was not assigned by Allah to me and is not the the the final arbiter of the reality of the ummah. I respect all of them, and some I respect more than others. So and I don't disrespect anybody who clearly was sincere and within the mainstream, and the mainstream is basically belief in Allah, the finality of the prophet, the orthodoxy of the, you know, the six pillars of the hadith, of jihad. For me, mainstream Islam is actually very simple: you want to follow; you want to worship Allah subhana wa ta'ala based upon the sunnah of the messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi wasallam; that is actually Islam, right? And then, mason would be, and then you respect the sahaba and their overall, you know, theology, ology and understanding, and that's a very broad overall; it's not the specific say that is orthodoxy; as for being a Muslim, that is the you believe in the or you believe in Allah, the prophet Muhammad, you are a Muslim. So once you understand that no one group is exclusively authoritatively representing Islam, you can then agree in some aspects, disagree in others.

For me personally, because I was a part of the movement for over 20 years, no doubt it has impacted me. So for example, to this day, uh when it comes to issues, maybe it's because of my background, I cannot be a a a ardent Maturid; I can't, even though I don't mind somebody who is, and I respect that, it's not a problem; I just can't do it in my life, and I that might be a, you know, repercussion to me. When it comes to theology generally, I know my critics don't agree, but I view myself as being what's the term here, whatever you want to call it, right? Where I don't differentiate between the Athar and the Quran, and I affirm their words and I leave the modality to Allah subhana wa ta'ala, which is a type of, it's not quite, but it is still, and overall, I'm more without a doubt, the school appeals to me more than the other schools because of its simplicity. I don't agree with and I don't disrespect Kalam if that makes sense, right? I just don't agree with it; I I think it is clearly coming from an alien in tradition to us, an Islamicized Hellenistic thought, and I just don't agree with it, but I understand why why it's there, and I don't disrespect it. So in that sense, broad theology, broad methodology, and believe it or not, after all is said and done, I still don't celebrate the mawlid. Mhm. I still don't; I still admire the definition of the bid'ah, and I think it is a pure definition because the other definition is a slippery slope. And so in my personal life, I do kind of sort of, you know, still embody that spirit, even though I don't view the other group as being wrong, if that makes sense. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Theism is safer, but the other group is not evil personified. It's not the demon. It's not like you know the the the devil. It's just another interpretation. And history has shown that overall they're very good people. Yeah. So, so I still remain a, call it what you will, and I retain certain, and and without a doubt, the person that I still have read the most of and admire the most in premodernity is, and in immediate premodernity, right? These are the two people, and in of course our times, as I mentioned the two names. So if you look at the people that I myself view myself as a product of, right, it's you know, and then the two people that I mentioned, these are people that I consider I'm a part of that trajectory of Islam, recognizing it's a human development and recognizing others are also human with their good and their bad. Subhan Allah.

Yeah. Uh excellent. Uh I think just just one last point; in your epilogue, you kind of give advice to the three groups of people, right? Uh academics, those within the movement, and those uh Muslims outside the movement. Uh maybe we can end with this if you want to share shed some light on this and anything else you wanted to say about the topic before we—I appreciate that open-ended question here—so uh my uh advice at the very end of the book was that uh academics need to look at the movement from within, not from without; academics observe the movement with their own biases; they're going to pick and choose and construct a version that is disconnected from reality; what do you view themselves as—that's what this book attempted to do, and I do believe it was successful in that. Uh Muslims outside the movement, I understand the amount of negativity. I understand the divisions. I understand, but also understand its positives and its appeal. Also understand why. Don't just be simplistic. Oh, petro dollars. That's not; that's being; that's being overly simplistic to the point of it being false. And again, the book goes into details here. You know, I didn't convert to copism because somebody handed me a bunch of cash. That's just ridiculous. You know, it appealed to me as an intelligent student of engineering, you know, very active in the Muslim community in Houston. There was a reason why it appealed to me. I understand that reason. And my appeal to those outside the movement is to understand the causes of its appeal. And when they understand, it might affect them in their own movements and maybe make their movements better, right? Because nobody wants to, you know, not worship Allah. Nobody wants to not follow the sunnah of the prophet; these movements as well. So start looking at the positives and try to implement them within your own movements. That was my advice to uh the outside; have some sympathy. And then for uh, you know, the people who follow—for those who are listening—because again, uh this human nature; nothing wrong with this; it is what it is. Defense mechanism is that you don't want to listen to the critic, which is understandable. It's again human nature. For those that are listening, mashallah, may Allah bless you for your open-mindedness. Understand—for me and I'll be very personal here—very personal. Mhm. The biggest impediment to move on for me—this is 10 years ago. So uh what years—in 2012, around 2010, 2011 was when I really began questioning, and it took me like a year of personal study where I refrained from teaching classes for a year at that point in time because I was really studying and rethinking, and then I wrote an article, you know, um on Islam on Muslim; I basically said I have now moved on from the movement, and I went on record and I've moved on from the movement, right? Um what was the biggest impediment? Why why was I still within the movement for so long? It wasn't because of the slogans, cuz I understood the shallowness of the slogans even in Medina. Even in Medina, the slogans had stopped appealing to me. Everybody knows this isn't the Quranic interpretation. Yeah. What was the main cause? Very very brutal honesty. Honesty. It was my emotional attachment to my teachers. Subhan Allah. It was the fact that I couldn't imagine all of them are wrong. How is that possible? And I know their sincerity and I can testify to their scholarship. These are not; Yeah. Yeah. These are the icons of and Islam, and this was my biggest impediment for years. It you're seeing you know something is wrong. It doesn't make sense. But you have an emotional attachment to people who have shaped you, whom you love. I still love my my my PhD begins with his name. My my book begins with his name. Yeah. Because he impacted me in a way that words cannot describe. When I think about it, I start getting teary-eyed and and emotional; like there's a deep impact that is beyond what he taught. I consider him to be I consider him to be that, right? But it took me years to understand piety is not the same as having the correct opinion. This is the impediment that I had. They are inshallah, and they were pious people, but other movements have the same emotional connection with their icons, and I know that doesn't make them right. Every time a major scholar dies of any movement, look at how the followers of the movement, they're in pain. They're crying; the accolades that come out, the Facebook posts, and you sense the imān and taqwa of the person who died. You sense the mahabbah in the hearts of the, and you know this must have been a righteous man. But the he says, "Oh, but he's the"; says, "Oh, but he's the"; says, "Oh, but he's Ali had." And they don't realize piety transcends movements. Sincerity transcends labels. And what I now say, Allah rewards piety and sincerity, not labels. This gets me into a lot of trouble. But this is what I firmly preach and believe amongst the amongst the amongst the yes, the amongst the amongst the amongst the traditional; all of them; you have people that are going to be in Jannah, and they were icons of their movements, and they believed and subscribed to their theologies, and they taught their theologies, but Allah will not punish them for an innocent jihad; rather Allah will reward them for their zuhd and their imān and their taqwa. If I can understand that these movements will all inshallah be not just in Jannah, potentially in—why do I want to create a living hell on earth with somebody inshallah I'm going to be with in Jannah. Yeah, to me it makes no sense to waste my time refuting other people who have passed the bar of salvation, and the bar of salvation is very low: you believe in Allah and you do good deeds and you want to take the prophet as your role model; you have passed the bar of salvation; literally it's that easy; don't make Islam difficult; obviously I mean, you know, conditions you understand to be so careful because my critics just come and say oh so what if you get my point here, right? Be a; try to be a good Muslim; try to implement the sunnah of Islam; ask Allah for forgiveness; and that's the bar of salvation, literally, and that transcends all. The bulk of the ummah has gone beyond the bar of salvation. The bulk, and this is of the baraka of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam; he himself told us that I hope that my ummah will be two-thirds of the people of Jannah, with utmost love and respect. If the traditionalists say only we're entering Jannah, the only we're entering Jannah, the Sufi say the the the say everybody else is a kāfir. I'm sorry, how will two-thirds of Jannah be Muslim? We thank Allah. Allah's rahmah is bigger than what some people say. Everybody who wants to follow the prophet will enter Jannah. That's what he himself said. Yeah. Everybody who wants to follow me will enter Jannah. Only the one who refuses to follow. Allah's mercy is so open. You try to come close to Allah. You try to follow the messenger, and you ask Allah to forgive you. Inshallah you will get there. Now within that there are some better than others. And I firmly believe mainstream Sunnism is mainstream orthodoxy. I believe this respect of the Sahaba, you know what? And within Sunnism, all strands are relatively relatively equal to me. But some are more beloved to me than others. So my advice then to uh uh you know, those who are subscribing to this movement is to understand that the person whom you oppose who is outside the movement is potentially just as sincere as you to Allah. And just as loving of the sunnah of the messenger of Allah as you are; understand this point, and then agree to disagree, understanding that your disagreements are then about interpretation and not about realities of imān and submission to Allah. Understand that's all I'm asking is that Allah will judge based upon. So the real enemy is not somebody who disagrees about is not somebody who disagrees about how to show love to the prophet, whether to celebrate or not celebrate the mawlid; the real enemy is the one who wants to bomb because they're Muslim. The real enemy is the one who wants to ban Muslims from coming to this country. The one who wants to shut down the masjids. The one who is an enemy of Allah and his messenger openly. That is the real enemy. If we can understand this point, then go ahead and be a Salafī; go ahead and be a; go ahead and be a hadithī, and agree to disagree with civility and taqwa. I'm not even telling; go ahead and say I believe the is, for example; I believe, but then add on, and I know that you have a different philosophy and school, and I know that deep down inside you want to worship Allah properly and love the messenger properly; as long as you can say this, then I believe inshallah we can go a long way in forming some type of unity as Allah wants us to do.

Yeah. Yeah. I hear a lot of um, right, the fix of priority here in your uh in your in your speech, which is um the priorities, right? We have being bombed; we have the crisis of the ummah, and it makes no sense for us to be uh fighting amongst each other. Um I think one person shared an analogy: It's like the house is on fire and we're fighting over the remote. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly the point here. And it really hurts me to see this even now. Not amongst not amongst the da'wah broke crowds, which we don't expect to show academic, even though they're causing a lot of damage amongst the, and they don't realize this. Right? People who don't have shouldn't be preaching to the masses in this manner because they're going to get involved in things beyond their their—No, I'm talking about people that are wiser and older and have studied. It hurts me. People that should know better don't seem to know better. And even now these debates are going online. Unbelievable. But we appeal first and foremost obviously to Allah subhana wa ta'ala for guidance in, and then we ask anybody, you know, uh as Allah says, right, anybody who is sincere and wanting to listen, listen directly to what others are saying; it's not just me; all of our alhamdulillah, people older, and I keep on saying this; I'm not calling to myself; if you want references and authorities, go to our seniors who are still alive; go to people far older than us; go to my—me personally, I I don't mind name-dropping here right now—one of the people that I greatly admire and respect, somebody that is older than me, wiser than me, more knowledgeable than me, go to him, Tariq Ramadan, who is the primary voice of Islamism in North America; I respect and admire him; I consider myself a student in front of him; go to him with these issues; have, even if he disagrees, he will disagree with an adab that is not shown amongst those who claim to be following him, right? This is my point here, and go ahead and do that. No problem. Follow your strand and agree to disagree with respect.

Yeah. So much uh benefit and uh beautiful points and gems that I think are very important for all of us. Uh one one thing I want to also just share with the listener about the book is that I think it's one of the uh benefits of your book is that you really show that copism is not monolithic. Right. When you read from the beginning to the end, uh you walk us through a bird's-eye view, and then you show us uh the different strands of capism theologically, legally, but also Yeah. Right. historically, also geographically. Exactly. And you get a a really um great idea of the

Complexity of this movement, uh, and how it's influenced and how it influences others. So I encourage everyone, uh, inshallah, to uh, read the book. Even though it's academic, you know, I didn't find it to be a hard read. That was the goal. Simple academics. That was the goal.

And by the way, what you stated, I'm very happy you stated it because that is an actual goal of mine. So that those who are following the movement can begin to understand the simplistic slogans don't work. They don't apply. When they see for themselves, the people who follow the movement themselves were different than who they are. The diversity demonstrates the humanity. That's what I was trying to show. Alhamdulillah.

So ask Allah to always bless you and increase you and uh, continue to uh, help the um and benefit the um through you and your teachings and your uh work. And I would love, inshallah, to have you on for further discussions in the future, anytime. And I look forward to seeing you at the next convention or conference, inshallah. Until then, bye.