Imam Abd ‘l-Hayy Al-Laknawi (or Maulana Abdul Hayy of Lucknow) would refuse to offer his Isnad to his own students he felt were not competent enough.

They would beg him but he would not budge, until they would give up.

Compare him to some teachers now. Register online and you’ll get your Ijazah before xyz Mickey Mouse course even starts!

I can't believe how Barelwis spin this story as some sort of praise for Alahazrat. It is the ultimate gustakhi. Also, the idea that Alahazrat as a child had one long cloak on and no underwear seems to be far-fetched.

I would charge every last one of them with gustakhi for propagating this fabrication against Alahazrat.

Self-diagnosis and self-medication are fine, but you alone are liable for your actions. You cannot blame a medical professional for any harm that ensues, even though that physician may have said the same thing in another context.

Likewise, all what pro se ifta - self-administering fatwa - means is that you are removing the mufti from the equation and taking full responsibility for your practice in the eyes of Allah.

An over reliance on analogy and broad principles might land you in error. Similarly, online fatwa websites might offer a fatwa that might be unsuitable or incorrect for your circumstances. This is a problem that most online fatwa websites seldom acknowledge or highlight.

Also, a mufti (a proper one, not a parrot) might be able to offer you an easy opinion that you might not be aware of. In fact, if you are lucky, a mufti might be able to assume the responsibility for issuing you a dispensation fatwa that others might not. This is also why it is recommended for Joe Bloggs Al-Fulani to built a rapport with his local scholar, who would then be more open to finding a better solution for him, rather than going in cold and him not knowing whether you will abuse his fatwa or not.

This is why there are countless warnings against ifta, not because it is wrong per se - in fact it is a communal obligation - but because it is a highway to Hell if misused or abused.

This is also why parrot ifta is extremely dangerous. The religious mandate in ifta is Shariah-wide, Madhhab-agnostic. Ifta in the understanding of the Quran and Sunnah was naturally not confined to a particular process or school. It is about the end result, i.e., the fatwa that the questioner takes home. Ifta is a synthesis between evidence and scholarly precedent. A parrot mufti thinks he is on the Haqq when constricting himself to a school and passes fatwa accordingly, not realising that his first and foremost duty and loyalty is to the Shariah by finding an answer that is suitable and digestible for the questioner, not the internal machinations of his Madhhab. A mufti is in a position of responsibility and care that cannot be fobbed off just because he is trained in one school only. Half knowledge is the most dangerous form of knowledge.

Highlighting the importance of precedence, Banuri (d. 1397 AH) was of the view that if an opinion of found in another school, then that is to be given preference over a new rule derived from the analogies of your own school.

Coming back to the issue of the mufti understanding both his responsibility to a questioner and his duty to being aware of various religious views across the spectrum, the discussion between Ibn ‘l-Qasim (d. 191 AH) and his son - when they had moved from Madinah to Egypt after his lengthy tutelage under Imam Malik (d. 179 AH) - sheds some light:

أَخْبَرَنَا عَبْدُ الْوَارِثِ بْنُ سُفْيَانَ قَالَ حَدَّثَنَا مُحَمَّدُ بْنُ عِيسَى قَالَ حَدَّثَنَا أَبُو بَكْرٍ قَالَ حَدَّثَنَا مُحَمَّدُ بْنُ الْأَصْبَغِ يُعْرَفُ بِابْنِ مَلِيحٍ قَالَ حَدَّثَنَا مِقْدَامُ بْنُ دَاوُدَ عَنْ عَمِّهِ سَعِيدِ بْنِ تَلِيدٍ أَنَّ عَبْدَ الرَّحْمَنِ بْنَ الْقَاسِمَ أَفْتَى ابْنَهُ عَبْدَ الصَمَدِ - وَكَانَ حَلَفَ بِالْمَشْيِ إِلَى مَكَّةَ فَحَنِثَ - بِكَفَّارَةِ يَمِينٍ. قَالَ: وَحَلَفَ مَرَّةً أُخْرَى بِصَدَقَةِ مَا يَمْلِكُ وَحَنِثَ فَأَفْتَاهُ بِكَفَّارَةِ يَمِينٍ، وَقَالَ لَهُ: إِنِّي قَدْ أَفْتَيْتُكَ بِقَوْلِ اللَّيْثِ، فَإِنْ عُدْتَ فَلَا أُفْتِكَ إِلَّا بِقَوْلِ مَالِكٍ

-الاستذكار لابن عبد البر

Note how he is prepared to pass fatwa according to different views on different occasions to the same questioner, and that his initial answer is ostensibly not even his own. Note also how the questioner - his son - does not self-administer the fatwa of Layth to himself, but rather he relies on the fatwa of his father and throws the burden of responsibility on him. That is what both sensible muftis and mustaftis do.

Mawlana Zeeshan’s review of Shaykh Hatim al-Awni’s مفهوم شرك العبادة and Cole Bunzel’s Wahhābism: The History of a Militant Islamic Movement. https://youtu.be/phE-ZEDLehY

سئل شيخنا المحدّث الشريف حاتم العوني عن الكتاب المرفق فأجاب بما يلي :

وقفت على كتاب د/ فهد الفهيد الذي يرد فيه على كتيبي (مفهوم شرك العبادة) والذي سماه بـ(نقض كتاب مفهوم شرك العبادة)، وهو في أكثر من ٨٠٠ صفحة .
وكما كنت أتوقع : عجز عن الإتيان بتعريف للعبادة يفرق بين العبادة التوحيدية والعبادة الشركية ، واستكثر من النقل بلا فقه ، وحاد عن عامة ما ذكرته في كتابي بأمور لا علاقة لها بالإشكال العلمي ، ووقع في تناقضات عجيبة لا تقع من طالب علم .
وأما تقديم سماحة المفتي وفقه الله وتقديم معالي الوزير الشيخ صالح آل الشيخ (وفقه الله)، فما زاد إلا تأكيدا على أنني أخالفهما علميا في هذه المسألة ، وهو أمر يعرفه عني القاصي والداني ، فما كان يُنتظر إلا أن يقدما له .
ومسائل العلم يُعرف صوابها من دليلها ، والحمد لله أن كتابي على صغر حجمه قد حوى من الاستدلال بالآيات والأحاديث الصحيحة وفق فهم أئمة الإسلام ما يبين الصواب من الغلط ، وهو على صغر حجمه احتاج لأكثر من ٨٠٠ صفحة من الرد البعيد عن حقيقة الرد ، وسيبقى الحق منصورا ببراهينه ، لا بغير ذلك من كل أمر أجنبي عنها !

The book الفصول في الأصول by Abu Bakr al-Razi al-Jassas, edited by Ajil Jasim al-Nashmi (عجيل جاسم النشمي), is an objectively terrible edit. It should be studied solely for how terrible it is.

When offering biographies in the notes, the editor repeatedly gets the names of people referred to in the text wrong. The book is filled with hundreds (not just a few dozen) typos and punctuation errors. There are places where it is obvious that lines have been rendered missing. His hadith referencing is totally off as well.

I have the physical copy of the second edition from 1994, from the Kuwaiti Awqaf. Looking at a PDF of the third edition in 2007, it has the same errors. The first edition probably had the same errors. No effort has been put in to rectify the errors.

Then there is a DKI Beirut print edited by one Muhammad Muhammad Tamir, which seems to be stolen from Nashmi. It has the same errors, with the exception of a few error corrections here and there, and a wholesale removal of the footnotes from the Nashmi edition, replaced by some of the DKI editor's own notes in order to give the impression that he is clever.

Then there is one from one Ismatullah Inayatullah Muhammad, published from Islamabad University and released in Word file format. This also has the same type of errors as the previous two, which means it is either stolen or just a Word type up of the book for free access.

I do not believe there has been a sufficient expose of these editions, let alone an effort for a proper edition. It is a tough job. Based on my lessons of the book, in order to edit Jassas's book, one needs good expertise in:
- Arabic language
- Fiqh Hanafi
- Fiqh Shafi'i
- Hanafi Usul
- Rival schools within Hanafi Usul
- Shafi'i Usul
- Fiqh of the Sahabah and Senior Tabi'un
- Mu'tazili principles
- The creed of the Ahl 'l-Hadith
- Biographies (Tarajim)
- Hadith
- Rijal and chains of Hadith
- Turath of 150 AH to 350 AH
- History
- Abbasid and Umayyad histories
- Disputes among the Sahabah
- Tafsir
- Qira'at, including extinct ones
- Jewish, Christian, and Magian beliefs
- Jassas' other works

That is what is required at a high expertise level. Then one will need a decent level of exposure to:
- Maliki Fiqh and Usul
- Hanbali Fiqh and Usul
- Zahiri Fiqh and Usul
- The intellectual and political situation in Baghdad

Such is the interdisciplinary nature of the book. This is not an exhaustive list. What makes the issue even more of a remote prospect is how neglected the book is in terms of education. The belief is that it has been discarded for later Hanafi Usul work. Either that, the book has too many uncomfortable truths highlighting I'tizal as the provenance of many opinions in Hanafi Usul. The fact, however, is that this remains an indispensable book to understand Hanafi Usul. With the amount of raw data and primary source information, there is no Hanafi Usul text that can touch it. No other early extant book in Usul is as exhaustive as it is.

فإلى الله المشتكى

Dear Gujjis, doing tafkhim on النون المخفاة followed by a non-tafkhim letter makes you sound doubly stupid.

Please stop.

An offending sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZouSpq3F6yg

There are some, from the medieval era right up to this day, who believe insulting people into Islam is the optimal mode of da'wah.

And it might be a successful strategy - for 1% of people. This 1% is then put on a pedestal as proof that the strategy works. Shame grenades are then lobbed against those who speak up against this, with rhetoric like 'oh he's converted 000s of people to Islam' or 'he is speaking the truth' or 'Allah does not shy away from the truth'.

Really?

What you don't hear about is the other 99% that apostatised, or moved further away from Islam, or became ambivalent of the faith, or were simply put off the faith by these 'clergymen' and retreated into their own shells without their ambitions ever being properly fulfilled.

Many of these people could have contributed so much more to Islam had the message been repackaged for them. Instead, in a bid to stroke their own egos, these clergymen couldn't see how fallacious their strategy was.

It's time to call time on such a strategy and its 'champions'.

کیا اس جاہل کے حلقے میں کوئی ایسا بندہ ہے جو اس کا منہ بند کرنے کی ذمہ داری لے؟

https://x.com/pakistan_untold/status/1844205024169111730

Zakir Naik has more gaffes than Joe Biden. He should retire.