Knowledge Retreat Day 3, RIS Malaysia 2017

NOWLEDGE RETREAT DAY 3, RIS MALAYSIA 2017
MASJID WILAYAH PERSEKUTUAN, KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA
8 MARCH 2017

A Limited Transcription

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf (may Allah protect him), answered on matters of:

[ ] Ahlul Halli Wal-'Aqdi, Text & Context
[ ] Islamic Education & Indigenous Scholars for Local Conditions
[ ] Civilizational Renewal
[ ] Restoration of Traditional Humanities
[ ] Brutal Honesty, but not Throwing Away The Tradition
[ ] Creativity in Studying Humanities

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[QUESTION]
Assalamu'alaikum Shaykh.

Could you describe, in more detail, of what ahlul halli wal 'aqdi, you mentioned, what that mean.. .. the group of solution makers?

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[ANSWER by SHAYKH HAMZA YUSUF]

Solution makers? Like, ok. So, in terms of creative thinking, one of the most important areas is fiqh, that Shaykh Abdullah Bin Bayyah has written several books now. I believe that he has put a tajdid, a renovation of working with usul al-fiqh, to address the problems of today.

One example of it was the Marrakesh Declaration, where he address the problem, of the citizenship. This idea, that non-Muslims has second-class citizenship, he made a very creative solution from the Sunnah and the Sirah, to show that a multicultural, a multireligious society was possible, honoring the people. And I think Malaysia as a case study for that. So that's an example of a creative solution, to a problem that was emerging in Iraq; where these poor people being discriminated against, with the belief by these people, that this is somehow 'Islamic'.

Slavery, have been abolished, and then Muslim signed on to all these agreements (treaties against slavery). So slavery cannot be brought back, by the flag of our Ummah. None of the ulama` went against that, so the Prophet says, '(Inna ummati) la tajtami`u `ala dalalatin... (fa idha ra'aytum al-ikhtilaf)'.. The Ummah doesn't agree on an error. And so, these idea, of taking people as concubines, as slaves (ISIS and the Iraqi Yazidis), it's just completely unacceptable. So, we need 'tahqiq al-manat', you know, when in usul al-fiqh, 'tahqiq al-manat' (and) 'takhrij al-manat'. Tahqiq al-manat, which is, realizing the suitability of ruling in a given circumstances, because you have text, and context. You have to be able to navigate both. So we have certain text, but we always have to take into consideration, the context.

So, we need to upgrade our Islamic education. All of our Islamic universities are problematic. Malaysia, I'll give you one example for Malaysia. Malaysia send students to, for instance, to Al-Azhar. Al-Azhar has been in crisis for a very long time. Al-Azhar is not going to provide creative Islamic solution, with all due respect to Al-Azhar, for the Malay conditions. You need to develop your own Islamic institutes here. ISTAC was an attempt to do that, you need to develop your own Islamic institutions here, and you need to have indigenous scholars that emerge from within your own society. You have all the tools that you need to do that, you don't need to go to other places to learn these. Arabic will always be a sine qua non (absolutely necessary) in Islamic education. Arabic can be taught in Malaysia.

There's always be a benefit that, the Arabs will always be relying on Arabs, and I believe that. Arabs, I mean, with the exception of Persians, the Arabs have always been at the forefront of transmitting the Arabic language. The Persians, developing credible grammatical studies and the great grammarians were all Persians. So, but, I really believe that, all... Turkey, has an independent Islamic tradition, they're not dependent on other places. And even though they need to be more creative, I think, in their Islamic education, they have some people like Dr Recep Şentürk, and others, that are really trying to create civilizational renewal, and so that's one area.

Another area, is restoration of traditional humanities, and liberal arts... philosophy. You have to study philosophy. Not everybody, but you have to have a segment of the society that is studying traditional metaphysics. Syed Naquib al-Attas, I mean, that was his entire desire for the ISTAC to be a place where real metaphysics could be pursued and developed. Because it doesn't stop, like in our tradition, Biology has to continue to operate. Archeology now, is deal..

If you go to Al-Azhar, and study theology, and I studied these, the same texts that they studied at Al-Azhar. They're dealing with stuffs that was done with a thousand years ago, and it's been long gone. And much of it, is, I'm being totally, brutally honest; much of it is simply a waste of time. Because we have new problems that have to be addressed, but you can't address those if you're using texts that were written, a thousand years ago, for problems that they had at their time.

And this is not, to throw away the tradition. The tradition is very important, and I do believe in the tradition. I am, somebody who is very committed to the Turath of this Ummah. But I also recognize that there are real problems with the Turath, because it hasn't continue to develop, with the problems that we have today. So, we need a much higher level of student to go into Islamic studies. We can't take the village people, that can't get into any other colleges, with no offense to village people. You need to have people that really have 1st-grade intellect that would do well in Math, Physics, and any other endeavour. You have to have them to go into Islamic studies. If you don't, you'll continue to get the results that we've been getting.

And this isn't to say that, all of the scholars are... no, we still have some brilliant scholars in our community, undeniably, and Shaykh Abdullah Bin Bayyah is a good example of that. Some of the Azharis are, they are amazing, what they know; their knowledge and their database, and things like that.

But, the creativity which comes out of studying humanities. The Arabs have not studied philosophy for a very long time, they don't study mantiq anymore, they don't, and the mantiq that they study in some of the madrasas is very simplistic, it's not the deep type of logical studies that our great scholars had at the past. By Qutbuddin Tahtani, these were giants of logic. Nasiruddin at-Tusi, Sa'aduddin at-Taftazani, these were... .

Fakhruddin ar-Razi, these were.. if you read the, Mafatih al-Ghayb, Fakhruddin says in the introduction to that book, that he knows, that a human cannot acquire the knowledge that he had in their lifetime. He was aware what he was given. These are the openings that Allah gives in certain people. But his mastery of so many subjects was just amazing. And he was a master of medicine, he argued that the heart had such a fire that God has put the lungs as a fanning system, to keep the fire. That's why when people get angry, or they get excited, they breathe quicker, to fan the heart, to cool the heart. 'Cause he said the fire of the heart was so intense, that if it didn't have the cooling system, we would explode. (Smiling) We burst into 'spontaneous combustion'. ... Tafaddhal (next question).

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Please feel free to inform me on the corrections needed.
And thank you Sidi Abdullah Siddiq Mohd Nasir for the knowledge that you taught me today. :)

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