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Does Islam Ever Change? The Role of Ijmāʿ (Consensus) in the 21st Century
During a time when fluidity impacts morals, laws, and principles, what happens to creed and objective truth? Dr. Omar Suleiman addresses the role of Ijma' when it comes to Islamic rulings on ever-changing modern day issues.
This session was part of the Yaqeen Academic Conference at the 2021 MAS-ICNA Convention in Chicago, IL.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. I want to encourage you before I even get started to make sure that you attend all of the talks inshallah ta'ala of this conference. I know that there are multiple sessions and all of them are very valuable. But you know the team really put a lot into putting together a beautiful diverse program for you to attend today inshallah ta'ala. So have your notepad ready and try to be present inshallah ta'ala. And also engage with the content, engage with the topics. It's meant to be a little bit more of an intimate discussion on some of these subjects inshallah ta'ala. And there is an element of spirituality, an element of intellectual discussion. There is tafsir, there is taskiya, there is fiqh that's going to be covered. So a lot that's going to be covered inshallah ta'ala over the course of this conference. With that being said, my topic is a topic that is actually a pretty dense topic. It's the topic of ijma' the topic of consensus. And consensus not just as a concept, a broader concept that we discuss in Islamic law. But as a source of Islamic legislation and the implications of that for us today. And I am working on an article on this and sometimes or in the past I've given a talk on an article I was working on. I never actually got to complete that article. So inshallah ta'ala you can hold me to it. If I show up to the next conference and I'm giving another talk and the article is not published by then, then you can tell me what happened to the article last year inshallah ta'ala. But hopefully it won't get to that level bi'nana'i ta'ala. And as I was writing the article and compiling my notes for it, I realized that if I start to read from my notes on the article, then I'm going to end up reading the first couple of pages.
And I'm not going to get to at least not get to present a broader perspective of what I personally hope to achieve inshallah ta'ala with this particular article. So the concept of ijma' the concept of consensus plays into the concept of change. I literally just got done an interview with the news station a few days ago. The question was isn't it time for Islam to update itself? Is it time for Islam to change? Is Islam in need of a change? And I know that we can give very short answers to this and so the short answer would be no, obviously. But for some that are grappling with the scope of what Islam allows in terms of change, either on an individual level or on an institutional level, right? They want a deeper answer. And we're living in a time where fluidity is not just in regards to law and legislation and regards to principles, but even in the very notions of creed and what objective truth is. And if there is a notion of objective truth, you know, subhanAllah, you're not just talking about parentalism in the ideological sense or in the theological sense of universalizing religion, universalizing theology, or saying that there are wisdoms to be appreciated from different religions in different ways, but turning them all into one way. The attempt, and inshaAllah ta'ala it will not be very successful, but the attempt to form an Abrahamic religion that erases distinctions between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, in the name of coexistence, which is actually not just an affront to serious Muslims, but an affront to serious Jews and to serious Christians as well if you think about it, right? To erase the tenets and all distinctions in the name of coexistence.
And the suggestion is that if you believe in a truth that is different from someone else's belief in truth, that you are not able to coexist. And so that plays out in discussions around celebrations and holidays, and you know, you're naturally an intolerant person if you uphold your own standards. And I can tell you that that's not true, that Muslims have been able to historically and can inshaAllah ta'ala uphold their claim to Islam as divine truth, and at the same time actually be pretty good neighbors. And be loving and able to not just be tolerant or be tolerable, but to actually contribute to their societies and to unlock some of the brilliance that that society and that collective community has to offer. So it's not a barrier to progress or coexistence, as is the underlying call that you find, you know, within erasing distinctions within religion. Now with that being said, when you come to the issue of fiqh, the issue of law and legislation, and what it actually means to have a code, I want to actually start with, and I only put a few passages here on my phone so that I wouldn't have my full notes in front of me, but I still had to read this passage because it was really beautiful. Dr. Hatim al-Hajj, hafidhahullah ta'ala, who wrote an article for Yaqeen, I want to say about a year and a half ago, two years ago, about the concept of tajdid, the concept of reform and renewal. He wrote a beautiful paragraph. He said, our deen is a living entity with one spirit, consistent objectives, and overarching maxims, but with a flexible legal framework that can appropriately engage with changing realities. Renewal is thus the appropriate word, but if it is about renewal, how does one renew the religion?
Does this mean we have the liberty to change the divine instruction? The default status in the religion is that it remains unchanging, and most of what is meant by renewal, i.e. tajdid, is actually restoration, achieved simply through reviving that which is original, and cleansing it of that which is unoriginal, such as innovations and customs which conflict with the revelation. Aside from that, there is another type of renewal, and that is the ijtihad-based renewal. This is when the tradition becomes conversant with new realities, changing realities, and does not just expand the boundaries of restriction where it needs to be, but actually talks about new ways that Islam can address these changing realities. This is a really beautiful passage that he talks about, sort of that balance. For some, when you talk about Islam not changing, what that really means is an insistence on certain cultural practices that actually do need to be removed, because they have tainted what is pure, and what has unlocked the genius of the global Muslim community throughout history, and currently shackles the present. For some, it is like we have to insist on these particular cultural values that have this fusion with Islam, or have an Islamic exterior, and that is obviously in opposition to what we are trying to achieve when we are talking about tajdeed, when we are talking about renewal. I think it is very important to understand that even when you talk about Mecca, this is very profound when you think about the idea of change and the idea of insisting on tradition. The Meccans, with all of their insanity in burying young girls alive, which was a practice of some of the tribes in Quraysh, with all of the practices, the lewd practices that we see, they even, with their idolatry, still had certain traditions that they insisted upon.
So they took the pure way of Ibrahim, and they insisted on these certain rigid practices, that had no basis whatsoever. And so, this idea of how they practiced the hajj with their idols, the hajj which is supposed to be a ritual where you honor the oneness of Allah. And they turned it into something that not only departed from the entire spirit and creed of the original hajj, but they also introduced practices that made it just so unnecessary difficult, and in the name of moral progress, or in the name of spiritual purity. So for example, doing hajj without clothes. That was them. That wasn't the Muslims. And they do it in the name of tradition. To enter the homes from the back rather than the front, during the times of hajj. So you have to have this very particular rigid way of entering into the home. The way that they prohibited certain, put certain restrictions. It's like, what are these restrictions? And in the name of insisting on tradition. Some of them made no sense whatsoever, even by the standards that they were claiming. And some of them just played into the overall dynamics of what they were putting forth in regards to societal hierarchies. So for example, putting the poor in one place, lifting the door of the Ka'bah so that only some could access it. These were things obviously that played into the overall structures that they were establishing. SubhanAllah, the Tawfiq, or the lack of Tawfiq, success that they had, where they put the poor in Arafah. And we will stay here in the vicinity of the Ka'bah. And of course the best place to be is Arafah. So even they insisted on certain practices that were strange and backwards. And in the name of tradition, preserving tradition, where they were willing to sacrifice the most fundamental element of the tradition of Ibrahim A.S.,
which was Tawheed, the entire purpose for which the Ka'bah was built. The entire essence of the religion. We'll throw that to the side, but we will maintain this practice. In fact, we'll make it more strict to give the illusion of an insistence upon tradition, that we are a people of tradition. And so you find that sometimes in cultures where there is an insistence on certain things. Why? Because deen, this is our religion, this is our way, these are our values. And it's like this has nothing to do with the deen whatsoever. Not only does it undermine the very premise that a semblance of this practice was built upon, but it actually is a practice that is completely foreign to Islam. Now here's the thing. What happens when our collective ignorance makes it hard for us to even be able to distinguish truth from falsehood anymore? To be able to sort out religion from negative practices of culture? Because culture is beautiful. Culture is not frowned upon inherently in Islam, by the way. Culture is actually looked at as a gift from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. It's a gift that Allah gives us languages and practices and things of that sort. But we don't frown upon culture. Islam is a filter of culture. Islam does not negate culture. But what happens when our collective ignorance makes it so that we can't distinguish those things anymore? And so then, work with me, 50, 60 years from now, let's say that we don't have technology anymore, that the internet crashes and that you don't have access to your favorite fatwa website, that you don't have access to your sunnah website, your hadith database, and there's no longer an emphasis on producing Islamic scholarship. Why? Because for even the student of knowledge, I can go to al-maktab ash-shamila, I can find my hadith, I can find my text and just glean it from there. What's the point of memorizing hadiths anymore? What's the point of sanad anymore, of chains of narration anymore? What's the point of understanding the sciences of usool al-fiqh and fiqh and qawa'id?
All that is foreign now, it's not necessary because it's not going to affect my immediate profession. I can be a great imam and I can go and I can just simply search these databases from now on. What happens when all the databases are gone? What happens when people are so removed from their religion, the foundations of their religion, they just can't tell anymore? And so, the year 2060, and please don't hold me to this number, this is not a prophecy, okay? I talk about this, the day of judgment is 2024, no it's not. Allah knows best. Maybe it is, but there is no reason to think that it's going to be this year or that year. But you know what happens to that young person that can't distinguish anymore? They just reject the whole thing. So I can't sort out anymore what is truth from falsehood. And that's why the period before Islam is called what? Jahiliyyah, ignorance. Because Salman al-Farisi radiyaAllahu anhu, as admirable as his pursuit of truth was, it's not a reasonable burden on the individual to have to go underground from Persia to Syria to Iraq to Turkey, right? From Anatolia to Damascus and all over the world trying to find these few people, baqaya min ahl al-kitab, the small group of people that still know the truth. And that's why the people that die in the later part of Jahiliyyah, as a collective, are held to a different standard of accountability. Allah judges every individual differently, right? But that is a period of Jahiliyyah, it's a period of great ignorance, because I don't know anymore. And you have those shining examples of sincere truth seekers. One of my favorites, and subhanAllah, I really love this man.
I really love this man. I really want to meet this man. Zaid ibn Amr al-Nufayl radiyaAllahu ta'ala anhu, who, if you follow the series, the first, we did a pretty extensive biography of him. This man, subhanAllah, who is going to the Ka'bah and saying, اللهم لا أعلم, Oh Allah, I don't know. أي الوجوه أحب إليك, I really don't know where to go with this. But I know I want the deen of Ibrahim A.S. and I know that you're one. I know these idols are not you. And if you show me that path, عبتك به, I will worship you with that path. But I don't know. I don't know what to do. And he just falls into sujood, prostration, and cries and cries and cries and cries. Because I don't know what to distinguish anymore. And the purity of his fitrah, which is why on an individual level, and this is one of the problems of me not reading from the articles, I'm going to go from place to place. But the purity of the fitrah, the purity of your natural inclination, the sincerity of your pursuit, actually gives you a greater sense of insight and gives you an ability to sort sometimes truth and falsehood in ways that you don't even know. Because your sincerity guides you towards truth. Because this path is in accordance with the way that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala created us. So the sincere seeker will naturally find their ways aligning. So Zayd ibn Amr Nufail, you know, he can't sort out what's happening in front of him. It's very cloudy, but he can sort out that idols are not gods. That the way of Ibrahim was one god. He can sort out that there's something morally repugnant about taking a young girl and burying her alive. There were a lot of people that could not even, their moral compass had become so corrupted they couldn't even see that anymore. And you think, oh well, you know, we would never get to that again. I hate to break it to you, but future civilizations, as you know, the process of filtration and repurification would look back on some of the practices
that have become normalized in our times and think, what a morally repugnant practice. And where were all of you? How did my grandma and grandpa, how did they not do anything about this? How did they just let this go? How did they think this was okay? So every generation, it gets foggy sometimes in certain regards. But Zayd ibn Amr Nufail, subhanAllah, he's so sincere in his pursuit. Allah opened his heart to say this is morally repugnant. And he goes and he protects these young girls as they're about to be buried alive. And he takes them to his home. He raises them until he marries them off. RadhiAllahu ta'ala anhu, what a man. That's why he's one ummah on the Day of Judgment though. He stands as an ummah by himself. Because that's not a reasonable expectation of everybody in that time. It's just not normal for everyone in that time. So what does it bring us back to? One of the scariest hadiths to me, because I could see it happening in smaller contexts, is when the Prophet ﷺ describes this time where people are saying Allah and la ilaha illallah and they're asked why. And they say, well, I think we used to hear our parents say this. We don't eat pork. Why? Well, we're Muslims and we were told that as Muslims we don't eat pork. Nothing else about that person is Muslim. No salah, no siyam, no nothing. But as a collective, they say, you know, we used to hear our parents say there's one God. That's all we have. La ilaha illallah. So you have these things that survive, little things that survive. But the overall jahl, the overall ignorance, has made it so foggy that you no longer can sort out truth from falsehood. And of course the Prophet ﷺ said in the hadith in Sahih Muslim, la taqum wa sah'a, hatta la yuqal fil ard Allah Allah. Subhanallah, the hour will not come until there is no one on earth even saying the name Allah anymore. Can you imagine that? Right?
So if the world was created for the worship of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, then there is no more point to this hub of debris at this point when people don't even say the name Allah anymore. What's the point of this world? At that point, it's ready to wrap this up. This is done. Right? The earth has expired as Allah's name is not mentioned anymore. What does this have to do with the topic of change and ijma'? And I thought we were talking about usool al-fiqh and I thought this was an academic conference. I'm trying to figure out what my train of thought was as well. But on a serious note, the problem is ignorance. And when the collective ignorance fogs, and when you marry that collective ignorance with unrestricted desire, then everything becomes fluid. And so truth no longer restricts desire or dictates principle. Desire dictates, ya buru'naha iwaja, how you shape the truth, or your claim to truth. And you can't make any more claims to tradition or history or legislation or law or principle or any type of divine rubric. Why? Because people's knowledge of that is being lost. So I bring it back to this. The beauty. I was walking back to my room last night, and I was hearing the mashayikh reading the Quran with qiraat, recitations, with asanid, with chains of narration. I read to my shaykh who read to his shaykh who read to his shaykh who read to his shaykh who read to his shaykh who read to his shaykh. And by the way, if you have a sanad in anything, there is an excitement. And I encourage everyone to actually undertake serious studies. It doesn't mean you become a scholar, but mashallah you have seminaries everywhere. You have summer retreats where you can study a text with a scholar. I read to this person who read to this person who read to this person who read to this person who read to this person who read to this person
who read to this person who read to Rasulullah ﷺ. It's like, woah! Subhanallah. It connects me to the Prophet ﷺ in a tangible and textual way. What beauty is that? There are people that I know that memorize, some of my own teachers, memorize Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim and more books of hadith from front to back, and they don't even stutter when they recite it. And they can read the whole chain of narration for every hadith. Now someone might say, it's kind of pointless, right? I mean, you can just Google the chain, just go to their websites, you can find them. You can go to this website and it will open up the sunnah. Isn't that, no, it's beautiful. That is where the salvation of Islam is. Now stay with me for a moment. Some people would say, you know, you go to these Islamic seminaries, and by the way, again, mashallah, amazing seminaries here in Chicago. May Allah ﷻ bless all of these ulama and their institutions, those that are within the corpus of Ahl as-Sunnah wal-Jama'ah and extending these legal traditions and schools that are just beautiful. And you think, why are they studying Kitab al-Tahara? Like, do I really need to go into all of these details of purification and water and what nullifies wudu and what doesn't nullify wudu? Like, do I really, why do you have to go through all of that? But the genius is that we have a written and oral tradition that is unchanged and timeless that we can continuously go back to, that can rescue people from the fog. When the fog makes it so difficult even for a sincere seeker to be able to sort out truth from falsehood anymore. Now we come to the deen. We come to the legal tradition. Does that mean that Islam does not change? Does that mean that Islam is restrictive, regressive? No, it actually means, it doesn't mean Islam is regressive,
it means Islam is resilient. It doesn't mean Islam is regressive, it means Islam is resilient. The admiration that other legal scholars from other traditions and philosophers have of this deen in fact is that you're reciting the same Quran over 1400 years, and you have preserved the qiraat, the recitations, to the point that you know the names of everyone that recited it up until your point, and you have people that are memorizing it, that you have preserved your ahadith. Can you imagine, subhanallah, the ahadith of the Prophet ﷺ? If you take the system, and when someone comes out Sahih al-Bukhari based on an article they read on Google or a 7-minute YouTube video, I'm like, do you know what Imam al-Bukhari did? For every single hadith he put in that book, the amount of, in academia you talk about how peer-reviewed is an article, do you know the level of peer-review, the science that goes into that? It's not the Quran. It is not the Quran. That's not the claim. But there is not a religious book in the world that belongs to any other tradition that is a fraction of the authenticity of Sahih al-Bukhari. Alhamdulillah for that. That's incredible. That's something to be proud of. That we have a collection, not just in Sahih al-Bukhari, Sahih Muslim and different, you know, Muslim Imam Ahmed, the different books, the six books and beyond, but the overall body, like, we can connect ourselves to the Prophet ﷺ in a very meaningful way, and in a way with confidence that we are gravitating towards a person and his way and his explanation and his understanding of the revelation that came to him. That's beautiful. That allows us to connect to something very meaningful, very tangible. And when it gets foggy, we can go back to something. And when it comes to the next level of that, well, what is ijma'? This was supposed to be the talk. Alright. Ijma' is the idea of consensus.
Now, consensus is a guard for the understanding of the sunnah. So I want you to think of it this way. What guards the interpretation of the Qur'an is the way of the Prophet ﷺ. Otherwise, they become words that can be played with. And if you're intelligent and nefarious enough, you can play with anything to make it sound like exactly what you want it to sound like. Alright. And that's why you've had attempts throughout history. If you don't have anything to govern the interpretation of a text, then that text is hostage to the interpreter. And so as Muslims, we have the way of the Prophet ﷺ. So when Allah says, أقم الصلاة establish the prayer, we have the way of the Prophet ﷺ to show us and tell us exactly what those five prayers are. There may be minor differences in regards to where a finger or a hand is placed, but the overall salah, that if you were to pray, like just think about this. If you were to walk into a jama'a right now, into a congregation, and you had Abu Bakr and Umar and Uthman and Ali and Al-Hassan and Al-Husayn, may Allah be pleased with them all, you'd be praying like them. You would not look like a weirdo praying next to them. Okay. That's beautiful. So you have the sunnah that governs the interpretation of the Qur'an that gives us a proper understanding. That's especially important in terms of creed. I remember there was a man that was debating Shaykh Ahmad Deedat ﷺ. And he said, Trinity is in the Qur'an. Y'all never heard this? Have you ever heard Trinity in the Qur'an? Can anyone tell me which ayah Trinity is in? Yeah? No, so that's the right answer. I'm talking about the pastor's answer. The right answer is that they disbelieved when they attributed 3 to Allah. But this man who's arguing with Ahmad Deedat, he says, Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. Ya Salam.
I mean, he got like, he was so convinced and convincing. I found it. Alright. So of course, common sense also sometimes is important. But there is also the fact that we have the way of the Prophet ﷺ, the explanation, the teaching of the Prophet ﷺ that governs the interpretation of the text to a point that we don't lose the fundamental meanings of those texts. Right? So the Qur'an is preserved, obviously in word and in letter, and it's been inscribed in the hearts of countless people over the ages. But the way of the Prophet ﷺ, and I want you to think about how important it is in terms of tashri'ah, in terms of legislation. And because this is a general audience, I'm not gonna get too into the details of the legal terminology here. But the idea of tashri'ah, legislation, that the sunnah is elevated. Why? Because if the words, أقيم الصلاة, were not in the Qur'an, establish the salah was not in the Qur'an, but we still had the sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ, and we still sorted that out, then we would understand any general meaning that calls to dhikr, that calls to the remembrance of God, or calls to supplication and prayer, to still be an upheld practice. The practice of salah would not be lost from this community. We'd still be praying five times a day. Because that's how important it is in terms of legislation. Nothing is like the Qur'an in terms of its glory and its sanctity. But from a legislative perspective and from a survival perspective in what reaches us. Now when it comes to consensus, when it comes to ijma'a. Ijma'a is a principle that exists within our corpus. The idea of consensus, that consensus is important. Why? Because you then have the collective generation that understood the words of the Prophet ﷺ all in a singular way. Alright? And so the ijma'a that cannot be questioned or broken is the ijma'a of the generation of the Prophet ﷺ. I want you to think about how ridiculous it sounds. And you know,
I say this and I don't want to mock here. I really don't want to mock. I'll mock the guy that said Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. But you know, in the sense that it means trinity. But the person who sincerely just came across something that seemed really enlightening and made life a lot easier for them and more convenient because they found this new opinion and interpretation of the Qur'an or a hadith and they, you know, it just gives them exactly what they want. I don't have to make a very inconvenient change in my life because I found this really intelligent sounding, remember it's foggy now, I don't know the usool, I don't know the foundations. It's really intelligent sounding article that explains the verses and explains the hadiths in such an easy way for me to follow. Can you think about how preposterous it is to think that a person in Chicago, let's make it even more preposterous, in Dallas, a person in Dallas, in Texas, in 2021, has understood the Qur'an in a more accurate way than the one upon whom the Qur'an was revealed and everyone around him. And I got it. Why? Because based on my freshman level Arabic, this ayah seems to be saying this. And you know what? If I'm online and I'm going, you know, if I'm suffering, and I don't want to use the word suffering because sacrifice for a greater cause is not suffering, it's growth. It's rewardable. When you know what you're doing, when you know that Allah is smiling at you for whatever inconvenience you are undertaking for His sake, it's actually not suffering. It's alhamdulillah. You smile like Dr. Yusuf Salam. Right? I mean, subhanAllah, like you know. You're at peace. You're at ease with that, right? But man, like, this is so much more convenient. And I can forward this article to everyone. And this person's a PhD at So-and-so University. And you can't even verify that person's credentials. You don't even know if that's really their name.
But you know what? Sounds good. Think about how preposterous the idea is that someone figured out something about the revelation, that the one upon whom revelation came and everyone around him, the most righteous people, as a generation that have ever walked the face of the earth. You got it and they did not. So the consensus of the companions is the unbreakable consensus. And there is no one literally in the history of our tradition that tries to penetrate that or tries to question otherwise. The question then becomes afterwards. Right? لا تجتمع أمتي على ضلالة The nation, this ummah does not agree upon error and falsehood as a principle. Right? This ummah does not agree upon falsehood and misguidance. The scholars of a single generation will not all come to a consensus on something that is false. You know why? Because that would be a bad assumption of Allah. Because the whole idea of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala saying اليوم أكملت لكم دينكم Today I completed my favor upon you, perfected my religion for you. The whole idea that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala would misguide collectively the entire community that is distinguished by pristine guidance is a bad assumption of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. It really is. Right? And so the idea that the entire body of scholarship of any singular generation could be an error is actually a very strange indictment to make. Now, how do we approach اجمع for the common person? Okay? I know my time is getting, is starting to run out. How much time? Oh my God. Alright. I'm glad I didn't let you read my bio. How much time? What's important to know about اجمع for me, consensus for me and the idea, and of course the article, insha'Allah ta'ala, I promise you, insha'Allah ta'ala, I intend to write it insha'Allah ta'ala within the next few months
and finish it, bintanay ta'ala. But there's the اجمع of the companions. Then there's the اجمع of a singular generation. Now, there is debate amongst the scholars about whether the اجمع of a generation other than the generation of the companions is binding upon the whole ummah. And that's a reasonable legal discussion. Especially when you talk about the earlier generations, like with the اجمع of the Tabi'een, which is not really going to depart from the اجمع of the Sahaba anyway, because the اجمع of the second generation, they're pretty much the kids of the Sahaba, and people that embraced Islam directly at the hands of the Sahaba. But let's say the اجمع of the third generation of Muslims, is that binding upon us as Muslims today. That's a legal debate. There's no consensus about that degree of consensus. Right? That's a legal debate for us. However, follow me, the earlier the consensus is established, then generally speaking, the more likely that consensus is to be correct. Why? Because the earlier the generation, the less distance it became from the initial point of revelation, as well as it having a greater level of righteousness and religiosity, because the Prophet ﷺ said, خير أمتي قرني, the best generation is my ummah, and then those that follow them, and those that follow them, and those that follow them. Right? So there's a closer point to the point of revelation, as well as an overall level of religiosity. However, we can't say that after the companions of the Prophet ﷺ, that there is consensus amongst the scholars of Islam, that every consensus of every generation that followed was binding. And in fact, Imam Ahmed رحمه الله, took great objection to people that claim consensus, because that's what they immediately knew in their own circle, in their own world. Think about a world without mass technology, right? If you live in a particular context, let's say you live in Baghdad, and I'm using Baghdad as an example, because it's a hub of Islamic scholarship and history, right? You've never been to Medina, or you're in Damascus, or you're in Egypt,
or wherever it is, you're in Timbuktu, you're in some of these great hubs of Islamic civilization. And everyone in your context agrees on something, and so you write it down and you claim it as a jma'a, that there's consensus amongst the scholars, because every scholar you met, and it might have been a large body of scholars, in your context, agrees upon something. Imam Ahmed رحمه الله, he really had a problem with that. So he said, stop saying jma'a every time you don't know of a difference of opinion, instead, لَا نَعْلَمُ خِلَافًا أَوْ نِزَاعًا فِي ذَلِكَ We don't know of a difference of opinion on this, because it's safer that way, because what might end up happening, is that primary evidence, meaning an authentic hadith, or some difference amongst the companions, shows itself later on. And then what? You say, well, this person in the 3rd century said a jma'a. So I can't go beyond that. That's unjust, and that actually stagnates and it harms the overall collection of what we have today. So that's one thing. So the first point is, the ijma'a of the companions is established, right? The consensus of the companions is an established point. And then you have, the earlier the consensus is established, overall that consensus is likely, even if it's not binding, it's likely to be most correct, right? The earlier the consensus is established with generations that came before. Then you have the consensus of the scholars of your generation. And I believe, I do believe this, and I'll go into details in the article insha'Allah, that the consensus of the scholars of your generation is binding upon that generation. Because that's the point of an ummah. Allah will not misguide the ummah collectively. The ummah cannot be collectively misguided. You can't have everyone that studies the tradition with its foundations and its branches at a serious level, all disagree on something as a collective body. Now we're living in an era where you literally open a Twitter account, and if you are outrageous enough, you become an authority suddenly. That does not violate the consensus.
Stick with the vast majority of people, Allah will not misguide the vast majority of the scholars in the ummah. Because the idea here is that now anyone, seriously, anybody, I mean subhanAllah, I do believe that as, you know, we're getting 5-10 years from now, may Allah protect us. May Allah protect us. اللهم أرنا الحق حق وارزقنا اتباعه وأرنا الباطل باطل وارزقنا اجتنابه You know that we ask Allah to show us truth as truth, so that we can follow it, and to show us falsehood as falsehood, so that we can avoid it. I think about how chaotic things are gonna get, with people presenting themselves as authorities, and what gives a person credibility is the size of their following alone, not their scholarly credentials, not their as-Saneed, not their chains back to their scholars, none of that. So I do believe that within a generation, looking to the vast majority of Islamic scholars, and bodies, and institutions, that a Muslim is safe. You're safe with your Iman. At the end of the day, you wanna be safe with your faith. You're safe with your Iman when you stick to those things. Okay? You don't wanna play with your Iman here. SubhanAllah, you find with the righteous, you know, the saying, ترقنا نصف الحلال that we left half of halal out of fear of falling into haram. I'm done, right? We left half of halal out of fear of falling into haram. Right? That this was the attitude of the companions, the attitude of the righteous that came before, that even if something is debatable within proper means, I don't wanna compromise. I don't wanna put my faith in jeopardy here because it goes back to the entire purpose. This is what I was talking about yesterday. The entire purpose and pursuit of my life is the pleasure of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So if this added level of safety, inconvenience, is going to mean that I stay within the bounds, and I don't violate that, الحمد لله
I'm happy with that. I'm pleased with that. You know, I can show up on the day of judgment and say, Yeah, Allah, I did what I did and I thought that I was following, again, the established, what appeared to be the established consensus amongst my time in my community. Now, you're gonna have adh fatawa that come out in every generation. Stay away from the adh. Stick to, you know, your overall faith, your overall practice should not be cherry-picking from here or there what suits you, and then finding the most convenient opinions here or there so that you can stay within your faith. Now, what's the point of truth? Right? What's the point of truth? And what's the point of a claim towards truth? Lastly, I'll say on this, المعلوم من الدين بالضرورة This is something that is a position that even the scholars that had issues with some of the claims to ijma' consensus, they believed in this concept of المعلوم من الدين بالضرورة that which is known within the religion by necessity. So, if someone comes up to you right now, says, I didn't know Muslims have to fast Ramadan. If someone says that in the audience, are you gonna believe them? As a Muslim, someone that grew up and born and raised Muslim says, no one ever told me you gotta fast Ramadan. No one ever told me I can't eat pork. You mean I can't drink this alcohol? Are you serious? No one ever told me this. This is المعلوم من الدين بالضرورة that which is known in the religion by necessity means it doesn't even need istidlal, it doesn't need evidence. It's so known and well established amongst the Muslims that you can't do certain things and that this is part of the religion. That when someone claims or puts in a revisionist narrative, it's like, yeah, no thank you. Right? Now the problem becomes again, collective ignorance makes that المعلوم من الدين بالضرورة smaller and smaller to where what is known at some point is لا إله إلا الله because that's what our parents used to say. And so that's why the prerogative for us as a community is knowledge, is علم. Know your دين. Know your history. Know your أصول.
Learn. We need more students of knowledge. We need people to go to قلم like Faduma did because she's going to cut me off and learn and graduate from seminaries. We need people to do this because we need people to know their foundations. We need people to know their tradition. That's what's going to give us life. The stagnation is when we restrict ourselves in other ways that are not found within our دين. That's when a stagnation happens. And when we don't produce with the values that we find in the way of our Prophet ﷺ. This دين gave great things to the world. It never shackled the world. It unlocked the brilliance of human potential by connecting it to the divine. By knowing our parameters as human beings, that actually allows us to unlock our genius in the areas that we are not aware of. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has given us gifts, the gifts of intellect, the gifts of perception, the gifts of empathy, the gifts of being amongst the people and reading their situation and a tradition that is flexible enough to accommodate those changing realities and also continue to make progress for the world. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala allow us to be a community that is not shackled by its tradition but instead grounded in its tradition and in constant, in constant production. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala allow the fruits of our iman to be plentiful and may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala allow the foundations of our iman to be well grounded in all of our hearts. Allahuma ameen. Jazakum Allah khayran. Al Fatiha.
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