ROOT ISLAMIC EDUCATION

by Shaykh Abdalqadir al-Murabit

http://bewley.virtualave.net/Root1.html

PREFACE
ISLAM AND MUSLIM RESPONSIBILITY
Islam is not and can never be, by definition, in crisis or need of revisionist change, Islam, (Kitab wa Sunna), is immutable in all places until the end of time. It is itself critique and balance-principle against which all human ventures must be measured and themselves revised and changed. The mizan of Islam adheres in every case, personal and social. At no time and in no place do the moral and political limits become altered to suit the latest fantasies and ambitions of men. Limits of human behaviour remain decreed by the revelation until the end of the human situation. This involves the delineation of kufr, shirk, and the hadd punishments, as well as hijra and jihad. The limits set on trading transactions and monetary systems have been decreed. Just as warfare has obligations, so too do commodity trading, coinage, marriage, sexual mores, and the maintenance of the public good. Thus, all ijtihad and all analogical extension of these basic elements must derive from the basic Islamic model of Madinah, during its phase when it functioned as the primary model for the future of mankind. The Madinah of the Salafi community was neither a primitive nor a formative society but a complete and blueprint pattern for Islamic societies from then on. It is clear that in Madinah at the time of the Salafi communities man was at his greatest and the social contract at its healthiest and most balanced. The myth of development and progress, an unscientific extension of victorian biological speculation into the realm of sociology, is not tenable. All the evidence points to social devolution, diminishment of freedom, the increasing inhibition of personal life and travel, invasion of privacy, moral degeneration, sexual deviation, the end of the marriage contract, and so on and so on. Today we find that the Muslims have been polarised into two camps, in a dialectic that backs the establishment of anti-Islamic regimes on the one hand and forces men into antithetical opposition and subversive resistance on the other. It is our contention that the Sirat al-Mustaqim, is between these two alternatives a middleway, an interface and a sunna.

Further we would propose that much of the confusion among the false 'ulama has been their misreading of the nature of modern 'technique' of technological process, due to their having been indoctrinated by the outmoded 'modernism' of men who had themselves been seconded to kafir ideas and organisations in egypt and the Middle East. To place the demands of a machine culture over the survival of man, and to prefer systems control over human transactions is against the Kitab wa Sunna in a clear and demonstrable way. The Messenger of Allah, blessings of Allah and peace be on him, did not create machines, but rather he left behind men who were, in their time and ever since have been, lights to inspire, and demand following, by men of heart and intellect. We would indicate, therefore, that the cause itself of this false dialectic above, is the false dialectic which sets the rules of 'system technique' over and against 'basic technique' or primitive technology, while aligning Salafi Islam with that world of primitive or basic technique. It has been this trick which embarrassed and deceived educated - in this technical sense Muslims to 'buy' the modernist dismantling of Islamic governance. Transposing, in the process, the true pattern of Islamic society, amirate ruling the people and fuqaha ruling the 'amir (by defining shari'a limits, not by cult of personality), with the myth of an Islamic 'state', which is a systems concept deriving from recent and jewish subversion of existing western modes that preceded the industrial revolution. For the industrial revolution was a christian achievement (of dubious worth) but its political ideology and its monetary system have both been jewish, while the nuclear and computer revolution has been almost entirely theirs. It is our conviction that the key to an authentic Islam, salafi wa'l madani, lies in a powerful, uncompromising 'aqida, an activated fiqh (knowledge of sources, judgement, execution of sentence), and an arabic tongue. Equally, we see that the survival from destructivist jewish control-systems and technique-enslaving politics lies simply with the rejection of the credit system on which present monetary theory works, the refusal of promissory notes (paper money), and the end to the banking system completely. It may well collapse before we ourselves destroy it, which would expose certainly, the myth of 'Islamic' banking. A return to a bi-metal and commodity exchange economy is probably on its way, and only the greedy and the short-sighted fail to see that, in any event, such was the system in use in Salafi Madinah. Now let us look at these groupings in more detail. Opposition to Islam has always, basically, taken one form. Or, if you like you could say two forms, two extremes which themselves lap over into each, the extremities meet, as it is said. The two deviations from the Sirat al-Mustaqim are defined in the Fatiha. In the name of Allah, the All-Merciful, the Utterly Merciful.

Praise belongs to Allah, Lord of all the Worlds, The Beneficent, the Merciful. King of the Day of Repayment, You alone we worship; You alone we ask for help. Guide us on the straight path, the path of those whom You have blessed; not of those with anger upon them nor of those gone astray. That is to say, those who have gone astray, and those who have incurred the anger of Allah, glory be to Him. In its first, and unchanging meaning our mufassarin are agreed this refers to the christians and the jews. The christians are astray in failing to recognise the last Messenger through deviation of making their prophet, 'Issa, peace be upon him, into a redemptive 'god'. The jews' error is more insidious. They not only turned from their own prophets but they failed to recognise 'Issa, peace be upon him, and then in turn the final Messenger, blessings of Allah and peace be upon him. As a result they are cursed, scattered on the face of the earth, never to be united again as a people. We could therefore say that the christian error was metaphysical, or to do with 'ibada, while the jewish error was political, or to do with the law. In this context we can refer to Ibn Taymiyya's Kitab Iqtida' as- Sirat al-Mustaqim Mukhalafat As-hab al-Jahim : To be precise: the source of the jews' kufr is that they do not act according to the knowledge they have got, for although they know the truth they do not follow its words or its deeds, together or separately. The source of the christians' kufr is that they act without knowledge, for they practice various rites without an authority from Allah, and they claim for Him without knowledge. That is why the Salaf like Sufyan ibn 'Uyayna and others used to say: 'If one of our scholars goes wrong he goes wrong like a jew, and if one of our worshippers goes wrong he goes wrong like a christian.' Thus these primary deviations can be found to contain all secondary deviations, so that in that phase a man may have adopted a heresy which while it does not make him a jew or a christian it gives his viewpoint that particular quality, and indeed, behaviour. In their secondary form we note two divisions in the Muslim community. The Mu'tazila and the Khawarij. The first make sects and divisions while the second cut off and reject the body, that is, are an elite. (Just as the jews fight among themselves as they rewrite the law of Musa, peace be upon him, while the christians claim they alone are 'redeemed' and so civilised.) The first introduce the rationalist spirit into subject matter that is beyond its scope while the second rightly insist that only they are right - in the former viewpoint nobody is right. What with the Mu'tazila is right is to be the enquirer, that is an end in itself.

Historically, the Mu'tazila come out of the Khawarij. The Khawarij make takfir of the main body of believers. Then they in turn split from their original allegiance and set up a further, more extreme 'correctness'. At that instant they become Mu'tazila, and indeed, it was from their ranks that the movement emerged. So, by their nature these two impulses to deviation and sectarianism are forced to cross-connect one with the other in a doomed dialectic, one which is rarely if ever recognised by its practitioners, lacking as they do the furqan of full Islam. The first pillar of Islam is the double shahada, 'I confirm that there is no god but Allah, and I confirm that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.' (May Allah bless him and grant him peace.) Why we say 'Kitab wa Sunna' is to confirm that what was brought was not the first shahada alone but also the second. When Islam is in crisis, men arise who wish to purify it, and since the teaching about Allah, glory be to Him, calls for a rigorous avoidance of shirk, they call to purify the deen of shirk, making that the whole of the deen, and not just that pertaining to the first shahada. The limits of this are, of course, to denigrate not only Madinah, but the Messenger himself, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and may Allah protect us from such error. In turn this becomes a denial of the second shahada - for it can be denied politically and by behaviour, while confirmed on the tongue. Confirmation of the second shahada is confirmation of the Shari'a itself, so if it disappears from a society and its 'amal then it is gone. The kafir will accept one who believes in god, even His oneness, but they cannot and will not accept the full splendour of the second shahada which is by definition, 'amal, living within the hudud, and jihad fisabilillah. In this split we would designate those who uphold the first shahada and lose the second, muwahhidun. And we confirm: 'La tawhid bi-duni'r-rasul', No tawhid without the Messenger, for, without him we could not know of tawhid. It is this correct tawhid that leads us to the second shahada. The muwahhidun want a tawhid, simple. Thus they declare their thesis with a 'Kitab at-Tawhid' in every case. Historically we find they end up opposing the Shari'a itself, and denying love of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace.

ONE

"Have you not seen how Allah has given an example of a good word which is like a good tree? Its roots are firm in the soil and its branches are high up in the heavens. It gives its fruits in every season by the command of its Lord. And Allah gives examples for people so that they may reflect." (14:24-25) As-Salaamu 'alaykum wa Rahmatullah. A'udhu billahi min ash-shaytanir-rajim, Bismillahir-rahmanir-rahim. We will take this ayat as the theme, subject, and key to everything that we will examine insha'Allah over the following days. Our theme is al-Tarbiyat al-Islamiyat al-Asliya - Root Islamic Education. What we mean by that is an Islamic education which is absolutely the source of Islam, the pure Islam of that Madinan source of the Messenger of Allah, blessings of Allah and peace be upon him. What you see today in the world is the result, among the people of the umma, of the abandonment of this root Islam. Now, if we say what that root Islam is, everyone would say, "Well, I agree with that." Then what we have to realise is that over a long period of time, an alteration, a splitting, a breaking, a diverting, a complexification of teachings have pulled the Muslim people away from this original Islam of the Messenger of Allah, blessings of Allah and peace be upon him, and the Sahaba. Now each one of you will have formed an opinion and an idea and an assessment by your intelligence - and I am not saying if there are new things in what you hear it is because of lack of intelligence or lack of good judgement on your part - but we must remember that we are the inheritors, all of us, of a confusion and a restatement of Islam from within our own 'ulama that has prevented people understanding what is the original salafi message of our Messenger, may Allah bless him and give him peace. And I include in that, elements from every aspect and every science within the sciences that could be subsumed under the phrase 'Islamic sciences'. But if it were simply a matter of 'ulum, if it was simply a matter of 'kalam', then we of course could have a lovely argument against 'madhhab'. I am going to try to get you to reach to a point prior to madhhab. Not to reject madhhab and not to say 'therefore we have eliminated it', but in order to understand what has been made of the concept of madhhab after the madhhab had in fact been a functioning and acceptable political and intellectual reality. In other words, the concept and the thesis of the madhhab position has been altered intellectually and politically throughout the ages and has gathered a portmanteau effect which has

weighed it down until you have a ship which is so full of intellectual luggage, so full of methodology, but nowhere impinging on the social process, that the ship sinks. So, I am saying, let us get onto the life-boat and let us take with us essential rations - of Deen al-Islam. If we take these and you then say, "Ah! But what about this, and what about that?" you are going to sink the life-boat. Let us get it onto land and then let us see if any of that material gets washed up by the tide, and we can review it and put back on a more expansive line what is possible. This is what I am suggesting. Because it cannot be that the viewpoint, that the so-called ijtihad, and here again what you think is ijtihad is not what our 'ulama meant by ijtihad in the first five hundred years of Islam, was only opinion, was only ra'y. Ijtihad meant something else. We will see again what has been done to the concept of 'ijtihad'. Ijtihad has become the discourteous, ignorant opinion of uninformed journalists and government representatives, of kafir puppets put over the Muslim people. So we will have to review the theme of ijtihad in order to arrive back at that thing that was meant, till we discover what lies have been said about our own tradition and our 'ulama - the fantasies and imaginations which suggest that to have 'taqlid' is to be a sheep, and that taqlid was inimical to ijtihad which is not correct, as we will see by the review of this material. Now you know that in Islam there are a series of groupings and splittings and thematic debates which have shaken our people, Mu'tazila, Khawarij and so on. There have been the mutakallimun. There has been the arrival of Abu'l-Hasan alAsh'ari and so on and so on. You know that there were the Imams of madhhab and I do not mean four. I mean there were several Imams of madhhab. There were the muhaddithun, there were the mufassirun. There were these complexifications and accretions, but at every stay of the way, all these phenomena were connected to khalifate and to power and to governance. Now, what we have at the moment is we have no fuqaha'! It is as simple as that. What do I mean by that? I mean we have 'ulama, but they are castrated, metaphorically speaking. They are impotised, they are unmanned, politically speaking. Why? Because they have assembled a vast body of knowledge - no one will argue it. They can quote you hadith from morning to night. They can make commentary on Qur'an from morning to night. How many will make prayer from night to morning is not our business. But these men cannot impinge on the social process. I was visited by a man from Qatar, who presented himself as this Islamic authority and an Islamic leader. He said, "Kitab wa Sunna". I said, "How can you say, 'Kitab wa Sunna', if you work for this Amir, when this and this, and more that you know that I do not know is haram and should be punished and is unacceptable?" He said, "Oh, he is a very nice man, he is a very charming man, but he is rather stupid and he does not understand these things so we do not discuss them with him." He was prepared to accept the complete surrender of that political and legal authority for

the tenure and the salary of a silent 'alim, who would underwrite every haram act of that government. So what we find is we have 'ulama' and no fuqaha'. It has to be that those people who talk about the creation of an Islamic state have arrived at this thesis. I refer to the modernists and the elements like Maududi and some intellectuals in Ikhwan alMuslimin, who talk about Islamic constitutions, when this is not acceptable - when this is in fact the structural process of the enemies of Islam. Constitutionalism is not Islamic, it is masonic and therefore jewish. They talk about an Islamic state, when what they are referring to, is that they would take on the infra-structure of a modern technological society and then somehow there would be some moral tidying up on the edges, so you would end up with a kind of Islam that was like the united states under Herbert Hoover - which is that it was a monopoly capitalism but nobody got drunk. This is not the case. This is not the Islamic thesis at all. So what we want to do is to go back to the very beginning of the process and see how piece by piece we can get a picture. The point that we will go back to - it is not conceivable that an intelligent Muslim could disagree with it, and it will have to mean that at the beginning, all later 'aqida, all later critiques, all later reformism, has to be thrown out as bid'a, whether it is from Ahl as-Sufiyya, whether it is from the Ahl al this or Ahl al that - you will have to say, "None of this is anything but accretion, let us find what they originally had." And that would also mean Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab, because they introduced elements in 'aqida which were not in this primal thesis, and which contradict, and which double back in a later generation on their own people so that they say something and then they pull back from it later on. As the wahhabis first rejected madhhab then were forced by the 'ulama at a later stage to accept Ahmad ibn Hanbal, but they do not open the books of Ibn Hanbal - they put them up on the wall as a protection for them. And then they say, "We'll take al-Ash'ari", but things in al-Ash'ari are contradicted by the Kitab at-Tawhid of Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab. Now they are talking about getting rid of al-Ash'ari because they are now so strong and so rich and nobody bothers about the law and nobody gets punished for doing anything unless he has got an income of under a thousand dollars a year. No, we do not want any of this, we want now to look at this original thesis. And we want in these coming gatherings to look at this basic material which comes from the Kitab of Allah and the Sunna. Everyone is quite correct when they say 'Kitab wa Sunna'. I am adding the outrageous, dangerous concept that if we say 'Kitab wa Sunna' it implies governance. And that we have a model for this governance, which is the city of The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and give him peace, Madinah al-Munawwarra. Islam is not an idealism, it is not an unachieved dream thwarted by the greed and power lust of generations of corrupt men. The Islam of The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and give him peace, was achieved, was laid down, did happen, did last, did endure, and then was swept away. And we

accept that first salafi record on which our deen is based and without which we could not have any deen, because we must have Sunna with Kitab. So we will have to look into this in a structured, patterned way. And in doing it we will have to assess the significance of a certain line that emerges that has harmony, intellectually, spiritually and politically with that first phenomenon. This is now just like chapter headings of what we are going to do. I am going to propose at a later date, that even what has been taught to you as the history of Islam is not the history of Islam at all. It has been taught to us as a dynastic panorama on the one hand, and a history of schools and sects on the other. And my thesis to you is that the history of Islam is a series of repeated manifestations of Islamic governance where the Amir was answerable to a body of responsible fuqaha' who governed according to the Kitab wa Sunna of the Salafi community. And that can be found sporadically here and sporadically there. We can show you a line that goes from Madinah al-Munawwara at the time of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and give him peace, through to Imam Malik, and from Imam Malik continues for five hundred years - in the Middle East, to the gates of India and to the gates of Russia, right across North Africa, right into Europe. For five hundred years, you find that the leadership was in the hands of slaves who were fuqaha' and before whom Amirs bowed their heads. And I say that is Islamic history, and not this other thing that has been invented by the orientalists, and which we have fallen for - of dynasties and epochs marked by changes in the style of jugs and arches. You see, the theme of this is so red hot, so extraordinary that you cannot conceive when you hear it, of why we did not all get the point before. Because as I say, we are not stupid. I am as astonished as you are. I could not have found this material in a library, although it is all in the library. So the 'alim has got it and he has missed it. Because he is not faqih. Because he is not embodying these three elements that make a faqih. Let us now just make one definition in advance of my presenting my thesis, of what constitutes the faqih. Fiqh. Giving judgement. The qadi's role. The qadi's role has three elements, and he must be able to embody these three elements or there is no Islamic governance. The first aspect of the qadi is that he must know the Salafi situation of Kitab wa Sunna according to the salafi community and he must know the 'amal of Madinah. He must know what the people, the Muslims, did. I am going to justify this claim later. I have to, because I have made a specific statement about Madinah. Let us say he must know the Salafi situation - legally. He must know the root, basic, legal parameters of the hudud, and he must know what the punishments are. He must know the usul, he must know the necessary and relevant hadith by which he will arrive at a legal decision. He must know the abrogated ayats. He must know those ayats which refer to this matter, that is primary, then the hadith.

Then he must know the 'amal. I will say necessarily, must know the 'amal of Madinah. Then having this knowledge his next necessity is judgement. In other words he must be an acceptable qadi, he must have an acceptable moral character, he must be able with that acceptable character, in that accepted position, to make a judgement about what is brought before him and arrive at an answer in harmony with that knowledge, and not overstepping it and in complete taqlid in every aspect, until the point when that taqlid stops. That we will come to later. Then the third thing is that having passed the sentence, which is in itself an act of his power by Allah and his political reality, he must do it in the knowledge that the total superstructure of the Islamic society can see that the sentence is executed because the third dimension of this role of qadi is that his sentence is carried out. And by that token, governance of the Muslims is demonstrated to the people. So this is the thesis that we are looking at. As well as taking you on this path and process by which we recover a Salafi position and a Madinan position, I want to, as a result of this, indicate to you what will be the foundations of an acceptable Islamic education on three levels. And the first two levels I want to put to you, the third I will not put to you, because it is not possible in this time span to do it, but I would like that we lay down these three elements, these three stages of Islamic education. In other words we would have to see that the duty of the Muslims politically, is the reformation of an educated community headed by an elite of committed, educated, informed Muslims who will put what they know into political action. In other words, they will from the first day, have no concept that they can form a political judgement as we now have armchair qadis who have as much power over the Islamic nexus as the American citizen has over his society, when he criticises it while watching it on television. I would say that the talib's Islam would be based on three books and would have these three elements. We have said 'Kitab wa Sunna' but Sunna we must make clear means the usul necessary to govern and control every aspect of the society with particular emphasis on the economic aspect. Because, in what has been done to us, we are the slaves, not of guns, not of tanks, not of ideology, not of soldiers, but of economic practice and the theft of resources. These three elements would be, first of all, naturally Kitaballah. Now I would say for the talib that he would need to know the arabic language, which we must assume and take as given. The beginning is Arabic. After Arabic we say he will have to know the Kitaballah, but it is not enough to say I have got the book and I have the language. Secondary to that, he must have the knowledge of the abrogated ayats. Thirdly, he must know the nuzul, he must know the story, the details, surrounding the descent of that ayat, or series of ayats, or surah. He must know what is connected to it, otherwise he might make imagination, he might be led

astray into Batinism and so on and so on. And I would say that for this, and there should be no controversy over my choice, that for the talib level, we would accept for its renown and for its clarity and for its simplicity, and for in fact its wonderful capacity to include all the essential elements, and for its clear statements about the arabic grammar that we can all understand, we would accept the very renowned and already very popular Tafsir al-Jalalayn . That is not controversial. We all accept it, we all use it and respect it. So we would say Tafsir al-Jalalayn for the talib level. Then, secondly, we come to the politics, law and hadith. For this we will take one book, which contains hadith, usul and the 'amal of Madinah, and that is alMuwatta' of Imam Malik. Al-Muwatta' of Imam Malik which is the earliest of our great books of which Imam Shafi'i said: "If there were any book after the Kitaballah by which I would swear, it would be al-Muwatta 'of Imam Malik." That would be the second book of this Tarbiyat al-Islamiyat al-Asliya. The third element, because in this execution of the Shari'a - and this establishing of an Islamic power structure, and base, and phenomenon, it is absolutely essential that those people, who take on the heavy responsibility of this taqlid, that will prepare a very, very small group for this electrifying ijtihad which we will later talk about and which we will later define, have in them the rahma of Allah. And it is not gained by any other means whatsoever except by love of the Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him. Because he has said in a much honoured hadith: "You are not mumin until you love me more than yourself, your family and your possessions and the whole world." The means to this compassion and this rahma is the love of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and give him peace. And so for this we have selected a book of sira. As you know there is a vast sira literature, and we have selected a book which is very early, which is about a thousand years old, and which has in it no fantasy, no fabulous elements, no hagiography of exaltation and metaphysical speculation, but simply tells the wonderful story of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and give him peace. First by saying what Allah has said about him in His book. And these are not just the famous ayats that we know - "Rahmatu lil'alameen," and so on, but ayats which we do not recognise at first as connecting to the Messenger of Allah, Allah's blessings and peace be upon him, and that are in themselves an education and an inspiration for us. That is the first wonderful thing about this book. The second thing is that everything it says about him and that he has said about himself, and which his Sahaba have said, come from hadith that have been scrutinised by its author, who is one of the greatest muhaddithun in the history of the science. Again, it is all based on pre-checked pre-examined hadith by a science

which is not being practised anymore. Which is another thing in a later stage we are going to have to examine, to explain why the use of hadith has been degraded and the meanings of the hadith have been dishonoured. And the third thing is that this book in its quality, is suffused with a love of the Prophet, peace be upon him, that is so overwhelming that you cannot read it without being affected. And the key to this is that the man who wrote the book was cutting heads, and hands, and marking backs, and passing sentences, and giving orders to Amirs. He was living it. He was on the edge. And he could not do it without help. He could not do it without the rahma of Allah. He could not do it without the 'ibada that gave him great, great love of the Messenger, may Allah bless him and give him peace. We have taken the Shifa' of Qadi 'Iyad as the third book in this basic Islamic education. We have Qur'an al-Karim with Tafsir Jalalayn . We have al-Muwatta' of Imam Malik, and we have the Shifa' which is renowned all over the Maghrib, all over West Africa, very well known in Syria, very well known among the people who study hadith, and very well known among the people who study the sira literature. Again, a book of impeccable credentials, that is honoured wherever it is read, and has in it no element of controversy whatsoever. That basically is the talib's level of Islamic study. Now we will just touch on the second level of Islamic study which would be for those people who would become the effective core members of an active Islamic society, who would be fuqaha', qadis, and therefore passing judgements. And for this we would have to extend systematically out to the essential elements of Islamic learning. We would then of course have to extend, and I will just give headlines now for you, we would have to extend the Qur'anic study to beyond Jalalayn, into deeper areas of knowledge. We would then with al-Muwatta'extend that knowledge - not into the portmanteau effect, not into the cases and the cases and the qiyas and the qiyas but by an extension which would give them a sense of this tradition, that I will be referring to later, where this happened in later years among the Muslims, that is, the carrying out of the sentence, the governing of people according to the Book and the Salafi record. We would take the Tartib al-Mudarik of Qadi 'Iyad because it gives this record and will let them see an example on which they must be based, and on which they have no choice but to be based. The Tartib al-Mudarik is a record of human achievement, Islamically, that, I tell you, when you study it, you will say, "I did not know such men existed on the face of the earth!" And the Tartib al-Mudarik is more electrifying than any of the books of the Tadhkirat al-Awliya and so on much more electrifying as a phenomenon of the human splendour of the people that

this Islamic deen has produced. It is magnificent, in its raising up of the human being. I want to begin directly with al-Muwatta' and to examine why it is significant, and what its significance is and we will have to, by extension in this matter, review first of all, the popular understanding of what is madhhab. Then we will have to review what, in fact, was madhhab. Then we will have to review what became of madhhab and then we will have to review how by brilliant tricks they managed to get rid of madhhab and leave nothing in its place except pamphlets and journalism, and having done that, we turned round and there was not an Islamic government to be seen anywhere! That is very interesting, and we should take note of it. Then when we have examined all that material we will go deeper into the AlMuwatta' of Imam Malik and in the next stage after that insha'Allah, I want that we look at it, at its absolute, electric, immediate relevance to social structures, institutions and political phenomena as existing today. And we will demonstrate, insha'Allah, quite clearly and simply, how you can transform monopoly capitalist society into an Islamic society without an inflationary crisis by the abandonment of the jewish monetary system that at present governs the whole world including the communist world. That is not uninteresting. And it is not complex - it is stunning in its simplicity! And you will see very clearly that Islamic economics, which is a phrase that we hear a lot nowadays is not monopoly capitalist and it is not state socialist. It has its own totally idiosyncratic, individualised economic pattern. This position, is far from being something that will drag you back 1400 years into this horror of the past - which, if you are a christian of course, 1400 years ago is a nightmare - but if you are a Muslim it is a dream of delight, so we do not worry about that. The point is it is not in any way going back, it is not romantic, it is applicable as long as the earth stands! It is as simple as that. And the reason they have created this myth of primitivism in relation to what is called Islamic fundamentalism, is that in this pattern there is absolutely no place for yahudi power - none whatsoever. None! Because there will be and there can be no riba', and when you see what the definition of riba' is you will say, "Then why did they tell me it just meant interest?" because it means much, much more. When you see what it is you will see that it will automatically make the Islamic heartland, and the continent of Africa, for example, immediately, the wealthiest portion of the earth. And the dominant elements of the kafir society will by definition be bankrupt, insha'Allah. We have reached the first step, and the first step is that we have just given you an overview of our theme, which is Root Islamic Education. And we have said basically, that for the talib level we would have three books -Qur'an, al-Muwatta', and ash-Shifa' of Qadi 'Iyad. We have said, to summarize, that we have to review the term madhhab, we have to review what happened to it. And we have said that Islamic governance is of its nature one by which amirate is basically held,

supported, controlled, effected by fuqaha' who have the power to prevent people going beyond the limits set out in the Kitab and the Sunna as embodied in these hadith and that 'amal of Madinah. That is our theme and that is what we will address ourselves to in this coming week, insha'Allah, step by step, and from now on it will be boring or it will be intoxicating. There will be nothing in between. Those who are not interested in taking on this, and acquiring this, and embodying this, will be bored. And those who desire this, and want to make it happen, can only be intoxicated by it. We are a people for whom sciences are intoxicating, and who in another context have made of intoxications, a science. That is another subject which has to be reviewed in its time. For the moment, I am leaving nothing on the board. I declare all groups, all organizations, everything is bida' and wahm except what is Kitab wa Sunna. And I will not deviate from that, and I will not end up in a position that says anything other than that. But we will arrive at a deeper understanding of it - not a broader understanding. We will become narrow, fundamentalist, fanatical, precise and dogmatic on the issue of holding to pure Islamic teaching. And if we do not lose that, we cannot go wrong. As-Salaamu 'alaykum.
Rsum de livre conseill pour apprendre : First: Tafsir jalalayn, Al muwatta, As-shifa qadi iyad Second : Tartib al-Mudarik of Qadi 'Iyad

Two

"The forerunners, the first of the Muhajirun and the Ansar, and those who have followed them in doing good, Allah is pleased with them and they are pleased with Him. He has made ready for them Gardens with rivers running under them, timelessly forever without end. That is the great victory." (9:101) As-Salaamu 'alaykum wa Rahmatullah. A'udhu billahi min ash-shaytanir-rajim, Bismillahir-rahmanir-rahim. The point we are going to move towards is to examine al-Muwatta' of Imam Malik. But we want to arrive at a way of looking at it that removes from it what is already built into your education, your modernised, modernist education, which is a false view of the very essential matters that you must understand in a Salafi manner. We want to remove the pre-judged, not the prejudiced in the ordinary sense of having a bad opinion, but a pre-judged view of what is, for example, such a thing as alMuwatta' of Imam Malik and what is the teaching of Malik. Before we go into the details, in order that there is no confusion, in order that I make quite clear from where this is all coming - we have been taught something in this modernist version which is not what the muslims were taught, and have been taught, for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. We have an idea that has been given to us by a whole set of our so-called 'ulama' who have completely changed the Salafi picture. And I include in this the people who call themselves the Salafi Movement, because it is one of the aspects of the re-writing of Islamic 'aqida and the re-writing of the real, traditional view of the Kitab wa Sunna. So that the slogan 'Kitab wa Sunna' politically already represents a position that is in fact utterly inimical to it, so that many who hold to it are in fact in a deep, haram, political commitment. Let us take one word. Let us take this word 'madhhab'. And madhhab is not a difficult word. It is from DhHB so it could not be more simple, it is one of the first words that the 'ajami' learns when he starts arabic. Dhahaba is a root - 'he went', and so his 'way' became his 'school'. 'The way he took', is existential, is human, is lived behaviour, and this becomes a school, and this implies an intellectual position. When you come to the time of the gathering of the hadith among the great muhaddithun whom we honour and respect, I am not speaking against them, please understand this, something happened. At each stage of these crystallizations and formalizations there was a price to be paid.

The picture of madhhab changes through the historical periods. But there have been different stages of a process and these are part of it, but we must understand that in it, in these things, the struggle to maintain the Salafi teaching of Islam came up against new cultural events that made it difficult. And so a kind of portmanteau effect began to take place in the learning, in the intellectual approach of the scholars. But my point which we made all through yesterday, was that we do not consider Islam as sustained by scholars - it is sustained by fuqaha', by people who pass legal judgement, who govern, and who control the social nexus of the Muslims in all aspects of life. The word madhhab we see quite clearly indicates 'this is the direction he took.' It is the line he took, it is the line of Malik - what we find is that these great men were defending this primal material. And what has been presented to us is that there are different madh-habs as if between the madhhabs there was, as it were, a fine legal point of difference. As if the difference between the Hanifiyya and the Shafi'iyya is over certain particular points of law - laws of 'waqf', laws of trading, laws of divorce, and so on. This is the first picture of madhhab which suggests therefore some unity of madhhabs with peripheral, tertiary differences. Now that is the official, modernist viewpoint. What you find that the modernists say is, "All the madhhabs are the same really, and we do not argue among ourselves about the madhhabs." And they say this as if it was the most wonderful objectivity, that they had achieved some marvellous objectivity - an objectivity nowhere demanded in this primal order to follow Kitab wa Sunna. On the contrary what is demanded is a meticulous commitment to a particular way, and not to allow anything to get in its way. So there cannot be from that point of view, four ways. There is one, primal Salafi way! The modernists say all the madhhabs are really the same. Now they are saying this while politically they are dumping the madhhabs - which means dumping legal judgement and execution of judgement and Islamic authority and political power. Because the modernist movement was spawned by freemasons within the Islamic community - Jamalud-din Al-Afghani, Muhammad 'Abduh, Rashid Rida, were completely enmeshed in their commitment, which was openly to subvert the Islamic ethos. And every trouble that we have today is traced back to them. All the tragedy of Egypt is traced back to them, and all the useless wasted blood from the Ikhwan al-Muslimin - despite the many noble and genuinely committed men in it they are victims of this ludicrous misreading of the Islamic ethos, ending up with people who are journalists making tafsir of Qur'an, riddled with errors, unacceptable at a 'first year' level. I want you to hold different concepts of madhhab and stretch one past the other to see the changing view of it. We have to understand the changes that have happened within our own umma, and of which we are the inheritors. The modernists said all the madhhabs are really the same, that there are just peripheral differences. Having got everyone to agree to this, they then indicated

that the differences of the madhhabs were of a ridiculous, divisive nature. You see, there is a dishonesty, a deception, a hypocrisy in their line - in the line of Rashid Rida, in the line of Muhammad 'Abduh. There is a deceptiveness because they are saying, "All the madh-habs are the same, there are peripheral differences. So why have you divided all this - it is so unnecessary, we do not need the madhhabs, we want to go beyond that," to what they call the Salafi position. Now having said that, they then rush to quote the hadith about "differences in my community are a mercy," and they say, "But look! Do you see how wonderful it is that we are tolerant and we have all these different madhhabs and so it is all 'all fine'." And at the end of the day, you look round and there is no government using any of these madhhabs to make any legal decision about anything. Then you find that the people who are calling for this new Salafi Islam in which you get a joining of what is apparently strange, but which we will see later is absolutely inevitable, the joining of two apparently totally contradictory movements - the wahhabiyya of the peninsula, and the modernists of Egypt and the subcontinent with Maudoudi. And you find them strangely united, although apparently totally opposite, these two positions, but with one politique, which is monopoly capitalist and which is totally kafir and has ended up with political alliances with the deadly enemies of Islam. Having done this strange juggling with madhhab they then move on, by some kind of analysis of a primal Islamic ethos which they have said is political, and then say 'so we need an Islamic state' and they start to sketch for you an Islamic state that has never existed on the face of the earth by their definition, (which is nothing other than the modern, western, 18th century-based, structuralist, institutionalist, masonic, state bureaucracy), which is to them an ideal because it has never been historically achieved. How is it that they are not calling you to that Salafi model? And what is that Salafi model? It is Madinah al-Munawwara. Now we find that the word 'madhhab' has been reduced and taken out of the political sphere and redefined as a matter of legalities and details of 'ibada, and we then find that we are asked to see them - 'all the same but there is some slight difference, so there is almost really nothing different but the movement of a finger in the latter part of the prayer between one madhhab and another, so really, what is all the fuss about that? How could you do such a thing?' And as they are saying that, if you do this in Makka the guards of the Ka'ba, come and catch your finger like this because they say it is a bid'a. They are saying intellectually one thing and politically behaving in this abominable way in another. And that is the exact relationship they have to 'madhhab'. Now we look at another possibility, which is that in this primal sense madhhab is a way that is taken, and we will say that really there is only one way and I will go further and say there has been only one way. And that is the way of the primal community of Madinah al-Munawwara, in the first days of the Messenger of Allah,

salla'llahu 'alayhi wa sallam, of his Companions, radhiallahu 'anhum, of his Tabi'in and Tabi'in of Tabi'in. And there was the model functioning in all its tremendous, extravagantly full social splendour. We are not idealists, we are not people who have never had this on the face of the earth. We are not utopians who long that one day the chains of man's suffering will be broken. We are realists who have seen demonstrated by the second great miracle of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and give him peace, which is the transformation of his desert people, his Ansar and Muhajirun, into an illuminated city, which is itself the proof of Islam and the demonstration to the world that men are not disgusting, they are not broken, they are not sinful, they are not cursed, but that they are noble, that they are khalifs on the earth and that Allah has chosen them because they are the crown of His creation and He was given a way by which they can live - that, is something tremendous. And it happened! And where did it happen? Madinah al-Munawwara! Now you must understand this if you are to understand all that comes later, because otherwise we say that if we do not take Madinah and accept Madinah then we reject the effective power and position that was accorded to the Messenger of Allah, salla'llahu 'alayhi was sallam, because everything that was sent down on him, and everything that he gave us in instruction, was demonstrated, and had to be of its nature something that worked! So if you reject Madinah and the impeccable nature of this wonderful phenomenon, then you reject the validity of the Islamic phenomenon itself, and therefore also, you reject the Qur'an because it declares it, it promises, and in the ayat that we heard read, it announces it! We are not going to look very pedantically at this pathway that takes us to Imam Malik. But we are not coming now to Malik as the leader of the Maliki madhhab. What we are going to find out when we examine this whole matter, is that these four so-called madhhabs have each produced a political reality, and because the dominant one is Hanafi, if you examine the Hanafi madhhab from this perspective that I am taking, you will see that the Hanafi madhhab created, co-operated with, was acceptable to, and responsive to, the urge to empire. And Hanafi teaching is irrevocably identified with the Moghul Empire, with the 'Uthmaniyya, over everything else. So you will find that its character is for empire, for bureaucracy, for portmanteau legalism. When we examine this you will find that each madhhab produces a political phenomenon. What we will find is that the teaching which Malik protected and defended and presented to the umma, was a teaching whose result was this: a dynamic tension between the amir and the fuqaha' who were the bastions, the guardians of the laws of God, who approved it, who made it happen and who pleaded the case and who insisted on the case to the point of persecution, to the point of torture, to the point of assassination. And when leadership, when the nidhamiyya slipped out of their hands beyond an acceptable limit after their

unconditional opposition to anything that was against what Allah had decreed in law - they would find that once the dialectic between the two could not function, they would withdraw and make hijra. And that principle which is at the basis of the Salafi phenomenon is hijra from Makka to Madina, hijra from an impossible situation to a possible situation, at the core, repeated again and again in this path of those men who held to this teaching which made possible the Islamic phenomenon - nothing else! Irrefutable proof, again and again and again, of a repetition of the primal, Salafi experience. That is what we can show to you in this way of those people who followed Malik. So we have the first element which is the dynamic tension, the dialectic between amirate and fiqh, between nidhamiyya and judgement according to the Islamic law of the salafi situation of Madina. And then you have the impossible moment, you have the barrier point, because everything is in motion - there is no 'fixed point' there is no Islamic state, there is Islamic governance! Do you understand the difference? There is not an institutionalised stasis - it is not Moghul, it is not Istanbul. It is a dynamic thing and it is a moving thing, and it changes its character by the men involved in it. And then there is a point beyond which they cannot accept it, and they pull out, and they make hijra. But this is not the end of the case because they are obliged to 'iqamat as-salat', they are obliged to establish the deen, they are obliged to impose the deen. They are obliged to fight, until the people say, "La ilaha illa'llah!" So what happens is that wherever they make hijra to, there they establish honourable governance. This pattern can go from a city, from a country - it can shrink down to a group. It can be nomadic, it can be a civilisation. It is a totally functional, social reality the minute two people are there and not one - which is what Islam is. Not only that, but then by the nature of this tremendous burden that has been placed on them, which they cannot bear, which God has told them they cannot bear, in the Qur'an, but they have to take on, they then have to up and carry it and deposit it which is jihad! They gather their strength from where they have made hijra, they prepare, by study, by intensification of knowledge, by plunging into the depths of the Qur'an, by invocation of Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, and repetition of the blessed ayats of the Qur'an, by calling on Allah, by His Blessed Names, and by practising war. Then when they can no longer contain this energy, they burst out of their ribats and make jihad and conquer the place in the name of Allah and His prophet and re-establish justice - social justice! This is the Islam that I can demonstrably show to you, documented, again and again, by those people who have held to this primal way. And it can not be shown outside the people who have rejected the 'amal of Madinah. Now we come to the evidence - now we become a court. Now we will become pedantic, detailed, and we will go over the material step by step, and examine it,

and we will see the proofs to which there are no answers. Because this argument is not new - I am not presenting you new material. The assembled material I have, as I say, has been assembled a thousand years ago. And it is a record of 500 years completely in accordance with the social pattern I have described to you, the social rhythm, and change that I have described to you. Now after that first 500 years then the same pattern repeats itself again and again among the people who followed this teaching of the 'amal of Madinah. And it is to be found in the Fulani jihad of 'Uthman dan Fodio in Northern Nigeria. It is to be found again and again in North Africa. So that a whole different flavour, a whole different experience, a whole different historical path is to be found where these people went - which is not tinged by the curse of empire, and power structure, and dunya beyond the limits, as is to be found in the middle east, in the 'Uthmaniyya, in the Moghul, and at those points where this teaching was stifled and smothered at certain points in the Maghrib. How are we to try and judge them? That this deen of Islam coming from The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and give him peace, is one of deep, deep brotherhood, and the foundation of that brotherhood is an uncompromising love of our Prophet, blessings of Allah and peace be upon him, and his Companions, all of them, because if you do not have that trusting and unprejudiced love and commitment and involvement with all of them, then you will take into your own hearts, conflict and divisiveness, right at the very beginning of your journey. When we speak of the Sahaba, remember we are speaking of those men that God has praised. Do not forget this. Unconditionally honoured above all of the human creation. "You are the best community that has been raised up for mankind. You enjoin right conduct and forbid indecency and you believe in Allah." (3:110). This is the first necessary element of your Islamic experience. He, salla'llahu 'alayhi wa salim said, "My Companions are like stars - you can guide your way in the dark by any of them." The first element of the Islamic experience is the phenomenon of The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and give him peace, coming at the end of the chain of Messengers as the final Messenger whose message is for all mankind. "Rahmatu li'l-'alamin", he is The Messenger and the mercy for all the worlds. And then that Allah gave to him Companions of this high calibre that we bless all of them and love all of them and anyone defined by that name is in our hears in unquestioned love. Qadi 'Iyad, radiyallahu 'anhu, says,

"The Prophet's Companions supported him in firmly establishing his Shari'a during his lifetime and after his death. They succeeded him in protecting it and keeping it in good custody". So we have an unconditional recognition that the teaching was preserved. "In numerous revealed tests Allah has indicated explicitly how He granted them excellence above others, commanding that they also be taken as examples to be emulated. And he gave severe warning against following paths other than theirs. He brought them to make their home in Madinah, the homeland of His Revelation, the ultimate refuge of His deen and the place where His Shari'a was instituted and established, the land to which His angels came down, the place of the hijra of The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and give him peace, the place in which His book was revealed, the land where the legacy of all His messengers was brought together to live forever, the place where all good was joined together. The cave of iman and wisdom, the golden mine of the shari'a and sunna, the radiant lamp of guidance by the light of which the regions of the East and West were illuminated. The unending fountainhead of knowledge from which all rivers, valleys and tributaries draw their water." "Allah then caused the Companions to be succeeded in each generation by followers of thorough truthfulness and justice." In other words, the light that came from this amazing, wonderful blessing of the existence of our Messenger, was so powerful that it affected not only this generation but the following ones, because the light was so strong from him and then from them. "Progeny of guidance and most excellent character. Gnosis and knowledge and discernment. From among them He chose the Imams of the muslims and set up from among them great people of learning, regarding the world and the deen. They clarified for the world what had been difficult to understand. They followed closely these aspects of the Sunna which were well established and by means of their discernment and authentic ijtihad" - and this word ijtihad we will examine in great detail later -"They arrived at rulings for those matters for which there were no explicit revealed texts. They extended by analogy those rulings of the Shari'a which they understood so that they applied to other matters also". In other words, what our Messenger gave us was something alive that could function. Whatever was brought by existence, by creation, that was new, we would have the means, the technique, the science and the people - the people, who could work out how to deal with it. Now, if it did not happen then, it could not happen later. It had to have happened then, and it did happen then, and we have the record of it happening then, we have the proof of it. And the end product of Islam, remember, is not a machine, is not a culture, and not like the shaytan masons say -

architecture and jugs and vases and carpets and music. It is men! The Prophet made men! And where there are men then there are women of equal worth and quality. Qadi 'Iyad says, "They did not deviate from the centre of the path of careful examination, and did not follow the side-roads that lead astray. They did not arbitrarily establish misguided personal opinions as the authority in their deen" - this was to be the special contribution of the modernists - "They were not filled with indifference and negligence like the godless, nor were they obstinate and headstrong. Rather, they followed in the footsteps of those who had gone before them. They followed closely the paths of the earlier generations in holding fast to the foundations of the Shari'a." "No harm came to them from the contrary opinions of those sects who opposed them, or from discordant controversies of those who unyieldingly adhered to their whims and their passions and were ultimately drowned in them." In other words all the sects and all the breakaways and all the intellectualizations in the early days did not stop these men from holding to this primal teaching. "Only that person attains true success who follows closely the footsteps and the acts contrary to the course of those who take flight from following." In other words, those who kept to this straight path, they had the success, because they followed the ones before them. He has said in this book that he has written, "I have gathered together the basic material that tells the lives of these men, because unless I tell you the lives of these men you are not going to understand why this is it, and everything else is not it." You have to see the demonstration of the end result which is men of the most extraordinary calibre. And what he unfolds later, is a quite stunning phenomenon. He presents you to a man, a slave, who is a qadi, a slave who becomes a qadi who is controlling and ruling an amir. There is no elitism, there is no racism, there is no preferential treatment, there is no elite, except the elite of knowledge and moral character. It is most extraordinary! And he says, 'I will show you this and demonstrate it to you.' So now we come to the main matter. He says, "Sufyan ibn 'Uyayna, may Allah be pleased with him, has said, 'Mercy comes down from above upon the mentioning and remembrance of the right-guided.' Abu Hanifa said, 'Narrations about the 'ulama' and their excellent qualities are more dear to me than much of fiqh for they are courtesies of our people.' We have mentioned accounts of the ordeals of those of them who were severely put to trial and the

tribulations of those of them who were greatly afflicted, such that it be a consolation for those who undergo trials." In other words, he says I am telling you about what they suffered, and what struggles they had, in order to strengthen you, because you will carry out this teaching, so you are going to have the same thing. Now this is a man who was the Qadi of Granada, who governed in Cordoba, who governed in Ceuta and who then made hijra - he himself lived every element of this - he himself then made hijra when the muwahhidun came from Tunisia with their false teaching and drove the murabitun out, and he went into Marrakesh in exile. And so powerful was this teaching that they had to send people to Marrakesh to assassinate him. They had no choice - because it was the truth and they could not bear it. Then he says, "The fountainhead of all this is Madinah. From here the whole thing burst out, and from there it spread abroad. The entire city of Madinah held to this view and from there it extended in the directions of the Hijaz and the Yemen where it was established by the like of Abu Qurra al-Qadi and Muhammad ibn Sadaqa of Fedaki. These followers of this teaching of Malik of Madina took root in Basra among the cities of Iraq. It prevailed there through Ibn Mahdi, al-Qa'nabi and others," and he mentioned their names. "Khorasan and the land that lies beyond Iraq", it went there. So now we come the next thing. He says it was in Nishapur, it was in iraq, it was in Iran, he said all the places it went - Syria, Egypt, Tashkent, Tunisia, North Africa, Andalusia, etc. It went to all these places and then conflicts began to arise and as he says, "People were hunting for the quarry of worldly benefits. They vented their malice against the Madinans and consequently the people of this teaching underwent great trials during this period. Although their numbers were great and the common people followed them." Then he says civil disturbance came and the thing changed. He also mentioned the Andalusians particularly and their importance. In other words he is saying this is the school that we are going to examine, this is the teaching, the way that we are going to examine - this way of Malik. And this way of Malik is based on the 'amal of Madinah. Now he begins to examine exactly what this is. You will realize that we are not talking any more, when we say Maliki, of madhhab in the sense we have been taught. What I am saying is not "Maliki" of now - "Maliki" of then was Islam itself, without one single piece of unclean matter on it. And this is extraordinary. He says we must first examine the excellence of Madinah and the Prophet's prayer for it. He says, "Anas ibn Malik has transmitted that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, 'O Allah! Bless them in the scales, their sa' and their mudd,'" [i.e.

their weights and their measures, and meaning by that the people of Madina. ] "It has been transmitted from Abu Hurayra, may Allah be pleased with him, from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and give him peace, 'O Allah! Give us blessing in our fruit and produce, give us blessing in our sa' and our mudd,' (in our weights and measures). 'O Allah! Ibrahim is indeed your slave, your dearly beloved, and your Prophet and I am your slave and your Prophet. He prayed to You for the sake of Makka and I pray to You for the sake of Madina with the like of that with which he called upon You for Makka and with what is similar to it, as well as it.'" What a wonderful thing! "'Umar ibn al-Khattab, may Allah be pleased with him, said to 'Abdullah ibn 'Ayyash, 'Are you the one who says that Makka is more excellent than Madinah?' And 'Abdallah said, 'Makka is Allah's haram, His sanctuary. In it there is His House.' And 'Umar said, 'I am not talking in the least about Allah's Haram, or His house, or His sanctuary!' 'Umar repeated to him again the same question -[ and he said, 'I am not talking about that.' And he asked the same question again and he said, 'I am not talking about that!'" In other words, 'But in Madinah, there was the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and give him peace, and there was the deen of Islam, alive!'] "Ibn 'Umar has transmitted that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and give him peace, said, 'No person shall patiently endure great difficulties of life or times of sickness in Madina, or its severity but that I shall be for him a witness and an intercessor on the Day of Rising!'" "It has been reported from Jabir ibn 'Abdullah that the one upon whom we ask blessings and peace said, 'Indeed Madina is like the bellows of a blazing furnace - it purifies what is in it that is impure, and what is in it that is good and pure stands out brightly.'" [And of course, what was in it was his Sahaba, without exception!] "And in the hadith of Zayd ibn Thabit, 'Truly it purifies like fire purifies the impurities of silver.'" "The one upon whom we ask blessings and peace said in a transmission from Sufyan ibn Abu Zuhayr, 'The Yemen will be conquered and people will come to it prodding their camels to go more quickly, transporting them with their families and dependents and all who obeyed them. But Madina would be better for them if they only knew.' And he made similar statements about the conquest of Iraq and Sham." "From Abu Hurayra, may Allah be pleased with him, 'The one upon whom we ask blessings and peace said, "By Him in whose hand is my soul! No one leaves Madina out of the desire to leave it and go elsewhere, but that Allah leaves behind in it one more excellent than he."'" So it is nothing but increase! If someone goes out of it with some desire that is not for Allah, then He puts someone even better in it.

"And from Abu Hurayra, may Allah be pleased with him, from The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and give him peace, 'There are angels in the roadways and the mountain passes leading to Madinah. Plague does not enter it, nor will the Dajjal.'" "Malik ibn Anas said, 'Madinah is surrouded by shahids. Upon the roadways and mountain passes that lead to it, there are angels protecting it. Neither the Dajjal will enter it, nor the plague. It is the abode of the hijra and the home of the Sunna. In it there are the most excellent of people after The Messenger, may Allah bless him and give him peace, and his Companions, may Allah be pleased with all of them. Allah chose it for him after his death, also, and thus made his grave there. In Madinah there is one of the beautiful gardens of the beautiful gardens of Janna.'" "Blessings and peace upon the one who said, 'Between the minbar and my grave is a garden of Janna.' And there is the minbar of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. There is not a single city other than Madinah which has the least of these attributes. And in another transmission he adds, "And it is from Madinah that on the Day of Rising, true nobles of this umma will be raised and sent forth." "Muhammad ibn Waqid as-Saffar said to Malik: "Abu 'Abdallah, which is dearer to you? Living here in Madinah, or in Makka?' So Malik answered, 'Right here in Madinah! And that is because Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala chose it for His Prophet, may Allah bless him and give him peace, over all the regions of the earth.'" "Ja'far ibn Muhammad said, 'It was once said to Malik, "You have chosen Madinah as the place where you live, and have turned away from the countryside and the lands of green pastures and fertility!" He said, "How could I not choose it. For there is not a single pathway in Madinah but that the Messenger, may Allah bless him and give him peace, walked down it, while the angel Jibril, peace be upon him, would descend on him in less than an hour, from within the very presence of the Lord of the worlds."'" So this is the thing from which it comes - this love of Madinah, which is the seal of the love of the deen, and that love of Madinah gives love of Muhammad, may Allah bless him and give him peace, and that gives pure tawhid and a correct path to Allah. "Abu Mus'ab az-Zuhri said, 'It was once said to Malik, "How did it come to be that the people of Madinah have such softness in their hearts?" He replied, "Because the

people of Makka threw out their Prophet, and the people of Madina brought him in!"'" "Muhammad ibn Maslamak said, 'I heard Malik say, "I entered into the presence of the abbasid monarch, al-Mahdi, and he said to me, 'Give me admonition!'" And Malik replied, "The admonition I give you is that you have taqwa before Allah and Him alone and that you show compassion to the people of the city of The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and give him peace, and to those who lived as his neighbours, for it has come down to us that The Messenger, may Allah bless him and give him peace, said, 'Madinah is the place to which I made hijra and it is the place from which I will be raised up. In it there is my grave. The people of it are my neighbours and it is the obligation by the right of my umma hat they protect and preserve me in protecting and preserving my neighbours. For whoever shall preserve and protect them, I shall be for him on the Day of Rising, a witness or an intercessor. And whoever does not observe and keep carefully this, my admonition, regarding my neighbours, Allah will give him to drink, from the clay of his own flesh, a poisonous liquid of madness and perdition.'"" So there we have the first glance at the foundations of this Salafi way, which is based on the importance, predominance and preference of the city of Madinah over all other lands, and its people over all other people, in those first generations. And we will insha'Allah look deeper into it, go further into it, till we arrive at something most inspiring, most enlightening, and that will give us a means in this age to revitalise our Islam in a way that will make all the falseness and unnecessary elements simply fall away. And I am taking you on a path that has in it no controversy, because all this is evidential from our Prophet, may Allah bless him and give him peace, from the Book of Allah, and from these great Sahaba, may Allah be pleased with all of them. As-Salaamu 'alaykum

Three

"The forerunners, the first of the Muhajirun and the Ansar, and those who have followed them in doing good, Allah is pleased with them and they are pleased with Him. He has made ready for them Gardens with rivers running under them, timelessly forever without end. That is the great victory." (9:101) A'udhu billahi min ash-shaytanir-rajim. Bismillahir-rahmanir-rahim. We are unwinding a thread, or we are following traces, and we have looked from here back, and then we want to be able to look from back, to here, but we want to go from there to here by the Sirat al-Mustaqim of the taqlid of the community of Sahaba and of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and give him peace, in their location of Madina al-Munawwara as that proof, manifestation and evidential reality of the Islamic ethos not being a dream or an ideal to work for, but a demonstration to the human race lasting through from this first glorious company of Sahaba, through the Tabi'in and the Tabi'in, in this pattern of harmonious and effective examination of the orders of Allah, the injunctions of The Messenger, may Allah bless him and give him peace, to arrive at correct decisions in all matters governing every aspect of life within the social nexus of the Muslims. Now we have had to decode, to break up concepts that have accreted, that have gathered over these years, that have veiled us, that have blocked us from understanding the Salafi situation, the Salafi conditions and the salafi intellectual discipline. The word that we had been examining and circling around and breaking up was this word, madhhab, and we had seen how it had crystallized into a concept of academic schools, of this idea that it was simply a matter of legal judgements, and parameters of legal judgements, and differences of legal judgement, and that, in fact, was really all there was to it, so that we have these four madhhabs. And then we saw that in these historical and political changes that took place in the umma, people have been told all the madhhabs are really the same, and we must not make any difference, must not pretend that there is any disharmony, and at the same time, having said that, we found another voice saying, 'there should not be any madhhabs, we must be Salafi and we must get rid of the madhhabs.' And so you have one lot saying, 'throw the baby out with the bathwater' and the other lot saying, 'there are four babies in the bath but they are really one,' so that every way, there is a muddle. This is what has gathered through these historical processes.

You have to de-mythologize and de-structure the given picture that you have formed that allows these concepts and measurements to come between your understanding of the Islamic ethos, to recover how it was understood by these first people in that situation of Madinah al-Munawwara in these early generations. Let us now look at other aspects of madh-hab that we have taken as given, that we have inherited without thinking about, and again, we find they are contradictory. Another myth about madhhab is that they are geographical, the Shafi'is are there, the Hanafis are there, the Malikis are there and the people of Ahmad ibn Hanbal are there, as if it was some kind of dispensation based on four people being in four points of the umma at a certain time to fulfil this function - the idea that it is geographical, based on someone being there and that one leader is there, another is there, and that they are all working harmoniously. But then alongside that myth there is another myth which is the most pernicious and remarkably deep-rooted, which is the family inheritance aspect of it - as if you inherited it along with the parental house and a piece of land so that you have someone say 'I am Maliki' or 'I am Hanafi, because my father was! and my grandfather was!' I know someone who went home to his family in Malaysia and said, "I am now following such and such a teacher." They said, "That is excellent!" He said, "And as a result I am now following Imam Malik," and there was immediately a family crisis. They said, "Get out of this house! Your father was Shafi'i, your grandfather was Shafi'i, and also you must be Shafi'i!" So suddenly the condition for following the unfortunate Imam was that your grandfather did - because even supposing that you arrived at the decision that he was the man to follow, it could not be done on the basis of your grandfather. It would have to be done on the basis of your own conviction that this was the best path. Now you will find, worse than that, there is almost a 'football club' view of the madhhabs, and this was encouraged not by 'ulama but by political leaders in order to keep them under control and to, in fact, subvert their power over them. So that it was eventually decreed, and another bid'a arrived in Makka by which they said that if you face that wall of Ka'ba you are Hanafi, if you face that wall of Ka'ba you are Maliki, and so on. We say we have four madhhabs and each one has a wall, as if suddenly that was some divine seal of approval on their being four madhhabs, when in fact earlier as you know, there were five very strong madhhabs and there were other smaller ones around them like that of Sufyan ath-Thawri and so on. So the whole thing has a mythic aspect which introduces a meta-history not acceptable in Islamic teaching. All this we have to dump, to get rid of! I do not want you to think that the point I am taking you to is that the Maliki madhhab is the only one and the others are no good! I am taking you to a point, insha'Allah, by argument, which is that there is a Salafi way, that is Sirat alMustaqim, which Malik indicated and which his madhhab, while it follows certain inexorable laws, is on, but is not on if it does not follow them, and the other three madhhabs are not, and have not been on, ever! That is not the same thing! So it is a

very far-reaching concept. It is a clean-up. It is a renewal. It is zero point we want to reach. To do this we must be firmly established in the assessment and the significance of Madina. Having established the importance of Madinah we must then recognize the importance of what went on in Madinah, who was in Madinah, and why they are preferred over everybody else. We will go from Madinah, to realizing what is important about Madinah, and within Madinahh. We will now make this next step, insha'Allah. We are going to take you into a realm of what seems like legal argument but its end result is of a political nature that you will be astonished at, and at a later point, insha'Allah, we will demonstrate to you exactly what the political implications have been in the past, and what they are now for da'wa and for the re-establishment and re-vitalisation of the Islamic ethos in the world today. Now we come to those transmissions by Qadi 'Iyad, may Allah be pleased with him, regarding this special excellence given Madinah by virtue of the superiority of its knowledge, iman, the sunna and the Qur'an. We are now going deeper into what we looked at yesterday. He says that 'A'isha, may Allah be pleased with her, transmitted that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "Other cities were conquered by the sword but Madinah was conquered by the Qur'an." It is transmitted from Abu Sa'id al Maqburi from Abu Hurayra that the Messenger of Allah said, "Madinah is the home of Islam, the abode of Iman, the land of hijra, and the place where the halal and the haram were initially set out." That is a very powerful statement. "Kathir ibn 'Abdullah transmitted from his father who transmitted from Kathir's grandfather that the one upon whom we ask blessings and peace said, 'Truly the deen shall retreat and take refuge in Madinah', and in another transmission, 'in the Hijaz, just like the snake returns to take refuge in its hole. In truth, the deen shall indeed find refuge in the Hijaz in the same manner that mountain-goats find refuge on the tops of mountains. Indeed, the deen began as something uncommon and strange and it shall certainly return again to be something uncommon and strange. Therefore, Tuba awaits the strangers, those who have set aright, after I am gone, that of my Sunna which the people have corrupted.'" So we see the indication of what is considered Sirat al-Mustaqim and who are those people who have held to this pure teaching. And this process outlined in this hadith by the one upon whom we ask blessings and peace is that process which Malik insists must be performed again and again and again by every generation, following

that initial pattern, unless the whole thing is to go off the rails. And we will see how one move away from Madinah destroys that path completely. "From Abu Hurayra, may Allah be pleased with him, 'The one upon whom we ask blessings and peace, said, "The Hour shall not take place until Iman returns to take refuge in Madinah just like the snake returning to take refuge in her hole."' Abu Mus'ab az-Zuhri said regarding this hadith, 'By Allah! It shall not return and take refuge but among its true followers and its people who establish it completely and properly and who institute in their lives its various precepts and laws, and who have knowledge of its proper interpretation, establishing firmly its rulings by which it judges.'" So that the duty of the Muslims is the living within and governance by what has been sent down and what has been ordained by Muhammad, may Allah bless him and give him peace, and following it by that 'amal, that practice of those people who were in harmony with it. "If it stopped with the one upon whom we ask blessings and peace, then it had not been handed over!" It would mean he had not delivered the message! And the last thing in the last Hajj he said was "Have I delivered the message?" and they said, "Yes!" Because what had happened was that he had made it come alive among his Companions. So that it is not finished with him until it is a proof among his Sahaba and the generations that followed. That is the proof that it has gone from the Prophetic zone into the ordinary human situation, gone from his excellence and glory to the ordinary human beings who follow, desiring Allah and the pleasure of Allah. Qadi 'Iyad says, "What the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, has said about Madinah does not constitute mere praise for a piece of land or a group of houses." He is not talking about the baraka of Madina as a place, in other words. "On the contrary, it is but praise for the people of that land and these houses, calling attention to the fact that these attributes shall endure in them but shall vanish from other than them, at the time when knowledge wil be taken back up to the Heavens and removed, such that the people shall take as their heads ignorant men of whom questions shall be asked and who will answer without means of knowledge. So they will go astray and lead the others astray. Ibn Abi 'Uways said, 'I heard Malik say regarding the meaning of the hadith, "Islam began as something uncommon and strange and shall return to be again like it began," namely it will return to Madinah, just as in Madinah it first began.'" So Qadi 'Iyad is saying therefore, that these people are the living continuance in its total pristine freshness of that transmission. It did not stop with the Messenger! It is the victory of Islam and the fountainhead of a world religion.

This reference to Madinah is not some simple appreciation of the tremendous baraka of the place, but the political spiritual reality of the transformed people in it. He takes us one step further and now we are beginning to go into this domain of legality by which you will understand that you have to be as an Islamic elite fuqaha'! You must take your rahma that has come to you by your Islam and embody it in the social nexus. There is no rahma in a home that stops at the door of the house. This is the message of Madinah - you are not a Muslim until your society is safe! You cannot preserve anything of ruhani lights or intellectual appreciation of intelligent worship as an individual in the deen of Islam, if that blessing stops at the door of your house. There is no Muslim who is a private Muslim. There is no manhood without governance, and being governed in a way acceptable to you, having accepted the deen of Islam. It is the definition of 'rijal', and without it you are as incomplete as if you were biologically incomplete. Now, we come to the chapter "On the Superiority of the Knowledge of the People of Madina and Granting of it Priority over the Knowledge of Other than Them, and the Emulation of the People of Madina by the Muslims of the First Generations." In other words, what they did in relation to Madina, for they did do it, and we too must do it. And this is the path that Malik defended and declared the only possible way, because the difference between what he is claiming and what everybody else claimed is that the foundation is practice, is 'amal, is behaviour and an acceptable behaviour, from this primal source. Do you see the jump? And this jump is political, and once you have got it, you cannot escape it. And where that is - you have the Islamic phenomenon, and where it is not, you have news of it and nothing more. "Zayd ibn Thabit, may Allah be pleased with him, said, 'If you see the people of Madinah adhering to a matter then know that it is sunna.'" Do you see what that means? This also means, deeper than you see, that the whole of this Islamic phenomenon is based on a warm-hearted, confident trust in your fellow Muslims. It is based on the confident awareness that if they were in Madina, it was right! So that already puts the Islamic reality as one with genuine, broad, confident trust in the true Muslims - political safety is assured. If you remove this Madinan politique of trust, then you will have what you see again and again, which is Muslims murdering Muslims. And the thing you will find later, insha'Allah, when we come to see the record of these men following this command beyond the Tabi'in of Tabi'in is that it becomes so politically dangerous, that people are sent after them to kill them, because they cannot rule unjustly while this claim to justice exists, and it is a phenomenon belonging to those people who follow this Madinan way. "Ibn 'Umar, may Allah be pleased with him, said, (and look how near we are to the whole process - the son of 'Umar) 'If only the people at the time of the occurrence of civil strife would refer the decision regarding it to the people of Madinah, and

when they reach consensus on a matter of importance, they would do it, the affair of the Muslims would be sound.'" (That is a categoric statement by Ibn 'Umar.) "But whenever someone criticizes and complains, the people follow them instead." "Malik, may Allah be pleased with him, said, 'Ibn Mas'ud used to be asked while in Iraq about certain matters and he would speak his opinions regarding them, but later when he would come to Madina he would ask about these same questions and find them to be contrary to the opinion he had expressed. So when he returned to Iraq he would not take the saddle off his camel or enter his house until he had gone to the man who had asked him such a question and informed him about the judgement of the people of Madina.' He said also, "Umar ibn 'Abd al-'Aziz, may Allah be pleased with him, would send out ten dispatches to the principal Islamic cities teaching them the different aspects of the sunna and fiqh and he would write to Madinah asking them about practices which had been instituted and come down from the past, because perhaps they might have some particular 'amal, some practice, among the legacy which was theirs. And he wrote to Abu Bakr ibn Hazm directing him to gather together, on his behalf, all the various aspects of the sunna and to send them to him in writing. But then he died." It says, 'Ibn Hazm had already written him a number of documents before he was even asked.'" So this was the viewpoint. And remember that it is commonly considered that Ibn 'Abd al-'Aziz was the one who returned rule to justice after it had been lost in rulership, in khalifate, after the first four khalifs. And his practice was this. So the reason he is highly esteemed by everybody is precisely for his Madinan connection. "Malik, may Allah be pleased with him, said, 'By Allah! Neither Sa'id ibn alMusayyab nor any other of the people of Madina were ever taken aback or outdone by an opinion expressed by anyone expressing opinions among the nonMadinans.'" (They were never taken short by it.) "'And were it not for the fact that 'Umar ibn 'Abd al-'Aziz acquired this knowledge in Madinah many of the people would have had great doubts about its validity.'" If he had not got it from Madinah, it was so different from what they were hearing outside Madina that if it had not been in evidence that it was from Madinah, they could not have taken it. This is a complete eye-opener about the early community. "'Abdullah ibn 'Umar ibn al-Khattab said, 'Abdullah wrote to me,' meaning by that 'Abdullah ibn Zubayr, 'and 'Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, each of them calling me to take part in the counsel between them'. And I wrote back to them, 'If the two of you really desire counsel then you must come to the Abode of the Hijra and the Sunna.'" If you want counsel then you must come to us. So we are building up an incontrovertible proof, an inescapable conclusion, about how we will arrive at all

matters governing the Islamic people. And now more evidence so that there is no doubt. "A man once said to Abu Bakr ibn 'Amir ibn Hazm about a certain matter, 'By Allah! I have no way of knowing what I am to do regarding such and such.' Abu Bakr replied, 'Son of my brother! if you find the people of this city, Madinah, have concurred on a matter then have absolutely no doubt that it is the truth.'" So this gives us a permission and an authority that we can take from Madinha. "And ash-Shafi'i said, 'If you find among the people of Madinah a matter concerning anything upon which they concur, and to which they adhere, then let there not be in your heart the least doubt about its validity.' Imam Shafi'i himself said there is no way round this issue, although later you will see that people were to take what he did, and turn it into something that was to deny the whole point, by intellectual juggling, and removal from political responsibility. Because you will find, and this is the point we keep coming back to, that this Madinan 'amal and this governing by it, is lashed into and bound in a dynamic, dialectical relationship with amirate. And it opposes amirate in its wrong actions, it challenges amirate in its deviation, it governs amirate in every time it gives and makes happen a legal action, and when it is opposed beyond bearable limits of the conscience of the men concerned, and they are persecuted by their refusal to budge from it, they withdraw in hijra, as the thing began by withdrawal from an intolerable place to a tolerable place, in hijra. They repeat the Prophetic pattern. They go to that safe place, and there they establish what is legal. And not content with that, the next part of that dialectic is, there they re-intensify their forces and they are re-intensified by the fact that they are able to live in harmony with the Sunna. That makes them powerful and that new power drives them out in a new Jihad to clean up, and to re-establish law in its proper Madinan condition. I am repeating what I said at the beginning but now you can begin to see it fleshed out by this knowledge of Madinah. We have to do this step by step. There is more to come and as we get further in, it becomes more and more political, and you will see the whole picture. And the end result is, it produces men of a calibre and nature not the same as where there is something called Islam that does not have this binding link with the 'amal of Madinah. So we will take a little more evidence on this matter, and then we will make another jump. "Ibn Nafi' said, 'Malik was of the firm opinion that when the people of the two harams, Makka and Madina, gave allegiance, their oath of allegiance became binding on all the people of Islam.'" "Abu Nu'aym said, 'I asked Malik about a certain thing and he said to me, "If you want knowledge then take up residence."'"

What did this mean? It meant that you could not have it unless you took it from the source, it had to feed back to the source. It is a very far-reaching thing and we will remember it, and remember it, as we go further on. So the traffic with Madina is never finished either. "Abu Nu'aym said, 'I asked Malik about a certain thing and he said to me, "If you want knowledge, then take up residence," (meaning here in Madinah), and he went on, "for the Qur'an was not revealed on the Euphrates River,"'" (meaning it was not revealed in Iraq!) "Imam ash-Shafi' said, 'I travelled to Madina and even wrote down in it their differences of opinion.'( He stated further, in another transmission), '...their differences of opinion regarding the portion of inheritance alloted to the grandfather.'" There was not one detail that he would let escape him when he was in Madinah. "Mis'ar said, 'I asked of Habib ibn Abi Thabit, "Who are the more knowledgeable of the Sunna or of fiqh - the people of the people of the Hijaz or the people of Iraq?" and he answered, "The people of the Hijaz."'" "Imam ash-Shafi'i said, 'Each hadith for which there is not a standard narration in Madina, even if it be one with a complete isnad, is a hadith in which there is a serious weakness.'" Malik, may Allah be pleased with him, said, right after mentioning the repetition of the shahada after giving a bequest, in a will, 'This is what I found the people of this city adhering to, therefore have no doubt that it is the truth.' 'Abdullah ibn 'Umar said, "Umar ibn 'Abd al-'Aziz sent Nafi' to egypt from Madinah to teach them the different parts of the Sunna." "Mujahid, 'Amr ibn Dinar and other than them from the people of Makka said, 'Our statutes and scholars of Makka were all similar and on the same path at the time when 'Ata ibn Abi Rabah left for Madinah. When he came back to us, his superiority over us became manifest to everybody.'" I think at this point we have now got the evidence for this significance of Madinah in this political sense of laying down what is the foundation of the Shari'a of Islam. We shall just do a little more. We have come now to something that is like a seal on what we have been talking about, because this is from Imam Malik himself. Insha'Allah later we will look at the Muwatta itself - at what it is, what its significance is and how it relates to our view on all matters, and also we will have to look at the relationship between laws and the hadith. We have to take all this

knowledge and apply it to our orientation of study, how we study, and what we arrive at, and what our goal is and therefore how we establish Islamic governance without which we are not complete. We have got to establish this Islamic governance! It is not a matter of overthrowing presidents and taking palaces - that will not change anything. It has to be that people take this on and make themselves lawful, and by their making themselves lawful nothing unlawful can get in. It is from the people. We are not trying to scrabble up helplessly to reach the Prophetic ideal. He has reached down and given us a means by which we can emulate him according to the limits of our own capacities and characters. Do you see the psychological difference? There is no despair in this. There is no persecution. There is no lament. There is no loss. You are khalifs. You can do it, you must do it, that is the Islamic way. Its a very big difference. Here is a letter from Malik ibn Anas to al-Layth ibn Sa'd. This is of great importance, because here he says in summary what we have been looking at in detail and making commentary on. He said: "I praise before you, Allah, other than whom there is no god. After this, may Allah grant us and you protection by means of obedience to Him secretly and in the open." (In other words, by your character and by your 'ibada and by your support of Shari'a in the social realm. ) "May He grant us and you full pardon from every unacceptable thing. Know, may Allah have mercy on you, that it has reached me that you, al-Layth ibn Sa'd are giving fatwas to the people by matters contrary to what is adhered to by the community of the people here among us in this our city in which we reside. By virtue of your status as Imam, your great excellence, your standing among the people of your land, the dependency of those around them on you and their reliance on whatever comes down to them from you, you ought by right to fear for yourself and to follow that, which by following it, you hope to be safe." "For Allah, may He be exalted, says in His Noble Book,"'The forerunners, the first of the Muhajirun and the Ansar, and those who have followed them in doing good, Allah is pleased with them and they are pleased with Him. He has made ready for them Gardens with rivers running under them, timelessly forever without end. That is the great victory.'" And He says, 'So give joyous news to My slaves, who listen to the word and follow that of it which is best. Those are they that Allah has guided and those are they who are the possessors of cores.' " (39:18). So he gives as his summary of these ayats: "The non-Madinans are, therefore, subordinate to the people of Madinah. The hijra was made to it. The Qur'an was revealed in it, the lawful was declared lawful and

the unlawful was declared unlawful, while the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and give him peace, was in the middle of them, and they were in the very presence of the revelation of the Message, and the act of revelation. He gave them commands and they obeyed him. He established for them the Sunna and they followed him until Allah brought his life to its completion and chose for him the reward of what is in His Presence, may Allah bless him and give him peace. "Then after he was gone, those people from his umma who were closest in following him, rose up and assumed authority after him. Whatever matters occurred in their midst for which they had explicit knowledge, they activated that knowledge into practice. And regarding whatever matters they did not have explicit knowledge about, they questioned. They then followed that position of those whom they found, by the light of their ijtihad and the proximity of their time to the Prophet, to be the strongest. And when there were those who held contrary positions to them in such matters or expressed positions with regard to these opinions which were stronger or more worthy to be followed they would set their own opinions aside, and follow and practice the others' opinions." "It was this same path which the Tabi'in then followed after, and they followed closely these various parts of the Sunna." So he is saying what was safe with the Messenger was safe with those Sahaba in Madinah and was safe with those Tabi'in in Madinah. "Therefore, if a matter is prominent in Madinah and put into practice, I am not of the opinion that anyone has the right to go contrary to it on the basis of that limited legacy which they possess in their own hands. This is impossible for anyone to ascribe to themselves or to lay claim to. And if all the peoples of all the cities should say, 'This is the 'amal which is in our city, or this is what those of the generations before us have executed and put into practice, they would not have certainty or authenticity in this regard, nor would they in this regard be doing what it is legitimate for them to do.'" (Uncompromising!) "Therefore regard yourself carefully. May Allah have mercy upon you in this matter that I have written to you about, and know that it is my hope that I have not been called to write this to you except out of the desire to give sincere counsel for the sake of Allah, glory be to Him. I continue to hold you in the highest regard and to have the best thoughts about you. Therefore give this letter of mine to you, the closeness to your heart which it deserves, for if you do this you will know that I have spared no efforts in giving you sincere advice. May Allah give us and you the success to be able to obey Him and to obey His Prophet in every single thing and in every type of circumstance, and peace be upon you and the mercy of Allah and His blessings." - (Written on Ahad, 9th of Safar, and Qadi 'Iyad has included,) "I have reproduced it as it is because there is no more important matter than this."

And we finish by looking at the reply of al-Layth to that letter. He wrote to Imam Malik, and from that letter, he says: "...and that word has reached you that I am giving fatwas regarding things that are contrary to what the community of the people among you in Madinah are adhering to, that I ought by right to fear for myself because of reliance upon me of those around me regarding the fatwas I give them, and that the non-Madinans are subordinate to the people of Madinah since to it the hijra was made and in it the Qur'an was revealed." By repeating these things he is not only making clear that he has understood, he is given confirmation of the message. "You have indeed spoken correctly in what you wrote to me about these things, insha'Allah, and what you wrote was received by me in a manner I do not dislike. For there is no-one more strongly given than I to acknowledging the excellence of the knowledge of the people of Madinah in the generations that have passed, over that of others, and there is none more given to following their fatwas than I, alhamdulillah! And for what you mentioned regarding having taken Madinah as his permanent residence, may Allah bless him and give him peace, the fact that the Qur'an was revealed to him there in the middle of his Companions, the knowledge that Allah imparted to them through him and that other people consequently became subordinate to them, these things are exactly as you have said." That was his reply, total confirmation of the reprimand of Imam Malik. That seals the proof about the primacy of these people. The next stage we will come to, will be to see what happened and how this was viewed by the Tabi'in, and Tabi'in of Tabi'in, and then we will look at this beginning of the splitting of the rope - the splitting of the fibre this way, that way, and that way, into groups, sects, conflict and confusion, so that everthing became the issue except how you behave! You have two things, you have belief in Allah, may He be exalted, with whom nothing can be associated, neither Prophet nor wali nor angel nor any person. And 'ibada to Him and obedience to Him according to the rites decreed. And then behaviour according to these rules which are the shari'a of Islam. There is no other added element, whether it is batini or association of heart or connection to people. Nothing! Nothing but 'amal that makes the muslim safe from your hand and your tongue and you safe with him, and safety for all within your borders. And the hudud observed in all matters and governance in justice - this is not an ideal, it was the matter from which it all came. The next step is to see how the strands were split and how we go back simply following this line to the stages that follow it, and then to see how we apply it ourselves, practically, in our work here. As-Salaamu 'alaykum.

Four

"We have only sent before you men who have received Revelation, so ask the people of Remembrance if you do not know." (6:44) Ask the People of the Book and the Sunna if you do not know, because the dhikr is the Kitaballah and the Sunna of the Messenger, may Allah bless him and give him peace. A'udhu billahi min ash-shaytanir-rajim. Bismillahir-rahmanir-rahim. This ayat is our key for today, because we have to bridge now this period from the Sahaba, past them, to Tabi'in and Tabi'in of Tabi'in - and within that span comes Imam Malik in Madina. And this ayat is the proof and confirmation of the order to take the deen from the Madinan 'ulama, and among them the best of them, who of course, at the time of Malik, was Malik, and along with him great men, we know them by name, one by one, the greatest of whom confirm Malik as the best of all of them, and then after Malik, those people that he had taught according to this original Salafi way. Now we come to what seems abstract and what seems in the realm of disputation and academicism, but it is not. But you must get this under your belts because otherwise you are going to be bamboozled by mischievous greybeards, and more mischievous beardless ones, using politics and talking the language of politics and revolution and using the name of Islam, and not knowing the first thing about it, and there are plenty of them around. We have to understand that we have established this vital point about the predominance of the people of Madina in all matters concerning 'amal and by that token, hadith, because this proper transmission of hadith and this arriving at a true picture of what was commanded and desired by the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and give him peace, is a Madinan phenomenon and is necessary to this total picture of Kitab wa Sunna. Now again we come back to this apparently dangerous topic of madhhab. And I must remind you that you are not in the luxurious position intellectually even of saying, "Well, will I be Maliki, or, will I be a Hanafi?" I am saying that the true madhhab is this primary sense of the way of Malik, in the way of the Salafis, is not a legal school, it is the seal of power on the fuqaha' to make legal judgements in governance of Muslim people. And I am saying that it collapsed! It went astray with the Hanafi madhhab as we will find out, and how, and why, for the reasons

that we will discover when we examine it. It went astray because there was something lacking, and the result was that it created empire, and it allowed aristocracy, it allowed elitism by genealogy, which is absolutely forbidden! And so the low were kept low and the high were kept high. And we will see by the same token that the people who followed Imam ash-Shafi'i never really got to grips with the social nexus, so they never really made an impact because again on one side, things were lacking. And we will see that Ibn Hanbal who was very famed as a muhaddith, he never had a madhhab at all, again because something was lacking. And we will see that the current regime that claims to be Hanbali is by the token of being Hanbali, totally free of legal obligation and challenge in the realm of 'usul', because it does not have 'usul'. You have a lot of hadith and you cannot make them link-in and lock-in to moral behaviour. And then the Maliki tradition itself, and this thing we are talking about, while it has stabilized sporadically here and there, has also, because of the decadence of the passage of time, taken on the portmanteau effect of the Hanafis in gathering endless qiyas, endless analogies, endless analogical cases, endless examples which weigh it down, and which make it encyclopaedic, so that your 'ulama are so encyclopaedic in their knowledge they cannot connect to 'amal. So it is not Maliki anymore, even though it is called Maliki. And then you get the final phase of the colonialist destruction of the Islamic ethos with the destruction of the last remnants of Maliki fiqh in egypt by the nationalization of al-Azhar by 'Abd al-Nasir, by the removal of the Maliki 'ulama' from the Jam'a Zeitouna in Tunis, and by the paralysis of the Maliki fiqh in the Qarawiyyin in Fez. The end of these three great universities meant the beheading of the tradition of Malik, to prevent the possibility of getting to the original teaching of Malik from them. We have to bear all this in mind. And therefore you must not be a 'football club', a Shafi'ite football club and a Hanafi football club. There is no way that you can end up with this position. You must say, "What is the methodology, and is it according to this Salafi knowledge and does it have the necessary elements?" And we have demonstrated beyond any question that it is necessary to follow the 'amal of Madinah. Now we have to realize that this 'amal of Madinah links in to hadith. The science of hadith cannot be separated from 'amal, because what is the use of a hadith if it is not acted upon! Even if that hadith is acceptable, its significance is that people act on it, and it takes preference over the one that is not acted upon. Now we will give some final confirmation of the truth of what has come down from the first generation and the 'ulama regarding the obligation of taking recourse to the 'amal of the people of Madinah, and the fact of its being, in their view, a definitive shari'a proof even if contrary to transmitted texts. In other words the ultimate confidence of the Islamic phenomenon is total confidence and trust that our Messenger, may Allah bless him and give him peace, had delivered the Message and that these noble men had taken it.

"It has been transmitted that 'Umar ibn al-Khattab said on the minbar, 'Through Allah's help, glory be to Him, I will cause to be severely straightened the circumstance of any man who transmits a hadith contrary to the 'amal of Madinah.'" That, as far as I am concerned, is proof. Three times he argued with the one upon whom we ask Allah's blessings and peace, and 'Umar said, "And I praise and thank Allah that the ayats were sent down confirming me." So who are we to argue with him? "Ibn al-Qasim and Ibn Wahb each said, 'I perceived that for Malik the 'amal was stronger than hadith. Malik said there were men among the people of knowledge of the Followers who would narrate various hadith and to whom would come the hadith narrated by others, and they would say, "We are not ignorant of these hadith, but the 'amal was instituted in the past and has come down to us in accordance with other hadith."'" "Malik said, 'I remember having seen Muhammad ibn Abu Bakr ibn 'Amr ibn Hazm who was a qadi in Madinah. His brother 'Abdullah, who was a transmitter of numerous hadiths, was a man of great truthfulness. I would hear 'Abdullah upbraid his brother whenever Muhammad handed down a judgement in which a hadith had been transmitted contrary to the judgement. He would say to his brother, "Did not such and such a hadith come down on this matter?" He would reply, "Yes, indeed." His brother would say to him, "What is the matter with you then that you have not handed down your judgement in accordance with it?" And Muhammad would reply, "But what is the position of the people with regard to this hadith?"'" i.e. referring to what had become a matter of concensus in the 'amal of Madinah, meaning that the 'amal was stronger than the hadith. "Ibn al Mu'adhhal said, 'I heard a man ask Ibn al-Majishun, "Why have you transmitted a hadith and then omitted to follow it?" He replied, "So that it be known that we have omitted to follow them while having full knowledge of them."'" "Ibn Mahdi said, 'The sunna of the early period from the sunna of the people of Madina is more excellent than hadith.' He also said, 'Often, I will have numerous hadith on a particular subject but will find the people of the Suffa, the people of Madinah, following something contrary to it. Consequently, those hadith will become weak, in my opinion.'" And then the very famous statement that is one of the keystones of this understanding of the original Islam. "Rabi'a said, 'One thousand transmitting from one thousand is preferred by me over one transmitting from one.'"

One thousand from one thousand is Madina and one from one is Kufa and Basra. And he went on to say that, "For one transmitting from one, would tear the Sunna right out of our hands." So the people who follow one transmitting from one had torn the Sunna out of their hands. "Ibn Abu Hazim said, 'Abu Darda' used to be asked questions to which he would give answers and it would be said to him, "But such and such has been reported to us contrary to what you have said." He would then reply, "I also have heard the contrary report, but nevertheless, I am come from the 'amal in accordance with something else."'" "Ibn Abu Zinad said, 'Umar ibn 'Abd al-'Aziz used to gather together the fuqaha and question them about the different parts of the Sunna and various traditional decisions which have been given that were part of the 'amal, and he would confirm their validity but he would discard those that were not part of the 'amal of the people of Madinah even though the person who had brought it forward as evidence was trustworthy and reliable.'" "Malik said, 'From Madinah, the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and give him peace, set out for such and such a ghazwat with so many thousand of his Companions, of whom almost 10,000 died, while the remainder were scattered through the lands. The opinion of which of these two groups, therefore, is more worthy of being followed and adhered to, of those among whom the Prophet died, may Allah bless him and give him peace, and those of his Companions whom I have just mentioned? Or of those among whom one or two of the Companions of the Prophet died, may Allah bless him and give him peace?' 'Ubaydullah ibn 'Abd al-Karim ar-Razi said, 'The Messenger of Allah died in the midst of 20,000 weeping eyes,'" And we are saying that it is from behind these eyes that we take our deen. "Know, may Allah bestow honours on you, that the major figures of all the schools among the fuqaha - the mutakallimun, the muhaddithun and other thinkers, constitute a single body rallied against the leaders of this teaching, on this question, attributing, on the basis of their presumption, error to us with regard to it, producing arguments against it on the basis of whatever happens to appear before them - even to the extent that some of them have gone beyond the extremities of being partisan, with calumnation, to the extent that they attacked the very integrity of Madinah itself and begun to list its defects and shortcomings although they were disputing about a matter which was not the issue of disagreement."

People were so resistant to this, that to create deviation they started to insult Madinah, when Madinah was not the issue - the issue was how you were going to behave, what sort of society you were going to have. "Thus among them are those who have not conceptualised the problem properly, and who have failed to verify the actual position of this teaching. Consequently, they based their discussions on it on mere conjecture and imagination. There are others among them who took their discussion on the matter from those who had not bothered to find out what our position was. Among them there are also those who distorted the matter and attributed to us on the same issue positions which we have never expressed, as did as-Sayrafi, al-Muhamili, and al-Ghazali. Indeed, they even quoted from us on this issue statements we have never made, and they produced against us the same arguments which are produced against those who attack the validity of ijma'." And so he said, "Now I want to present the question in such a way that the fair-minded person will not find any cause to deny its validity after having fully investigated it, and if Allah wills, I will make clear the area of disagreement." He says, "Know that the consensus, the ijma', of the people of Madinah is of two types." Now these are now principles of fiqh and this fiqh, he says, is the dynamic, active, functioning, real one. "One, a type derived by way of direct transmission." (We have consensus of the people of Madina of a type.) "that derives from a direct ransmission and narration from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and give him peace, which has been handed down from the mass of one generation to the mass of the next, which they practised as 'amal, and it was not hidden, and it was transmitted from the overwhelming majority of one generation to the overwhelming majority of the next, from the time of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and give him peace." "The second type concerns their consensus upon 'amal arrived at by way of ijtihad and deduction." Ijtihad is working it out. You have got all the evidence and you still have a jump to get to what must be done, and from that point, on the basis of that, you must decide. Ijtihad is new material. So now we come to the next stage. Qadi Abu Fadl, may Allah be pleased with him, said, and remember, never forget that this qadi we are reading from is not a dry scholar, this is not a man sitting with his belly full of haram couscous in the palace of a tyrant. Make no mistake about it,

the whole point of demonstration of Islam is that this justice never stopped being practised. We are not reduced to darkness and ignorance and betrayal and treachery after the one upon whom we ask Allah's blessings and peace. This has fought its way through the ages victoriously and effectively in different places at different times, and Qadi Abu Fadl is a man whose writings were all done while cutting hands and necks, and marking backs, and passing judgements, and passing lands on from generation to generation under Islamic law, and commanding Amirs to fulfil obligations and limiting them in their expansion, and energies and their capacities, and reminding them of the hudud of Allah and insisting on them, effectively because the Murabitun for over 50 years held to this teaching until the Muwahhidun came and swept them out, and then what happened was that they made hijra, and so this qadi then withdrew to Marrakesh and continued to teach there and to write there and to leave behind the 'ash-Shifa' , which is the greatest book of sira written, and which is his crowning achievement, and then he was assassinated by the Muwahhidun in Marrakesh, may Allah be pleased with him. He says, "You must know, may Allah grant us and you success, that the ruling that applies to one who has undertaken to worship Allah, through His commands and His prohibitions, may He be exalted, who seeks to take upon himself the Shari'a of His Prophet, may Allah bless him and give him peace, is that he earnestly seeks the knowledge of it." The ruling is, if you take this on you will want the knowledge of it. So this is binding on all of them. "He must know how to worship, what he may do and what he must leave aside of both what is required of him and what is prohibited. He must know what is permitted to him and what is prohibited, what is permissible to him and what he is given inspiration to do, and that he seek the knowledge of this from the Book of Allah and the Sunna of His Prophet." In other words, what he initiates of new knowledge must be derived from Kitab wa Sunna. "For they are the two great and only foundations by which the Shari'a can remain. After that, the ijma', the consensus of the Muslims, is designated a position of authority beneath them and must itself be supported by them, for it is not valid and that a matter of ijma', come forth and then be agreed on except on the basis of these two - Kitab wa Sunna. It must come either from an explicit statement of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and give him peace, which the Companions had knowledge of, but put aside transmitting it, or it has to come from an ijtihad based on both the Qur'an and sunna. The second opinion can be valid only for those who

have knowledge of that ijma', coming by way of ijtihad. But none of this can be accomplished except through the full realization of the knowledge that is required." Ijtihad, this new judgement on new material, needs knowledge: "Knowledge of the various methods and means which lead to it, by way of the direct transmission or reflection of seeking-out, before doing, of understanding different texts in relationship to each other, of memorization, of the knowledge about which are the valid sunnas, and which became widespread, of the knowledge of how understanding is acquired-namely the science of the direct surface meaning of the words which is the science of the Arabic vocabulary and language. The knowledge of their meanings, the intent of the Shari'a and its ultimate objectives. One must be able to distinguish in one's knowledge between modes of linguistic expression that are unambiguous and explicit and those which have ready apparent meanings yet have the possibility of supporting contrary meanings that you cannot see first time. One must have knowledge of things left unspoken in statements, yet implicit in them and buried. And one must have knowledge of the remaining aspects that linguistic expression can have." You must, in other words, know what you are getting into. This is what is referred to as knowledge of usul of fiqh. So he is saying, 'This is usul of fiqh.' In other words, this man, who takes on all of this, has got to know these elements in order to be capable of making this ijtihad. So first of all, he is defining what he has to do prior to that, which is taqlid. He has to be able to follow this course, otherwise it is not Islamic. "This is what is referred to as the knowledge of usul of fiqh, most of which is tied directly to the knowledge of Arabic and the meaning intended by discourse and direct address. After all of this comes the study of how qiyas - analogy - is applied to matters not dealt with in clear texts, which is done by referring them to other matters for which there are clear texts. This is done by drawing attention to the ground of the qiyas, the basis of the analogy, and how that basis is determined to be similar to the matter." In other words, how it matches it. So again this is an expert knowledge that must be arrived at. "All of this thesis requires great time and patience and one must be fully engaged in worship at the time of doing it." It must be a man of 'ibada who takes on this knowledge. He says, "Those that arrive at this path, namely, the path of ijtihad."

That is the point - we have to create an elite of fuqaha' who can get to this point of ijtihad, so that they must know all this usul of fiqh. And then you give them something totally new, that the culture has created, that the situation has created, and they can look in the Kitab, and look in the Sunna and they add all of that up and then they have got to decide how to deal with this. And that moment must be politically and spiritually safe for the deen of Islam. And if they are that, it would be! And again all this means confidence and trust in the muslims. It means that where this is established we can trust each other and feel safe with each other. And he says, "This ijtihad and the handing down of rules and Shari'a, on the basis of it," he says, "there are very few, very few who have this capacity. Indeed they are fewer than the few after the first generation - the upright salihun and the first three praiseworthy generations. Now since this is the nature of the matter, any human being burdened with the moral responsibility to obey Allah, but not having attained the status of being able to know the Shari'a, on his own, is necessarily required to get that knowledge from someone else." So you must take it from one who knows it. It is not in books you see - the thing is live! It is live material! And it has never ceased to be live material based on this clear record. "He must take the knowledge of every act of worship he has been commanded to do - every application of the Shari'a that has been made responsible for him to perform directly, from that man who can give it to him straight from the source and who will make him know exactly what to do. That man must be the staff by which he stands in his own transmission to others, in the knowledge he acquires, and in the shari'a parameters by which he lives." The one he takes it from must embody it politically, spirtually and morally. And he says, "This is taqlid." His taking it, i.e. the one who needs it taking it from the one who has got it, who is that man described - that is taqlid. So the lie of 'Abduh and Rashid Rida and these other shaytans that taqlid meant some passive surrender of responsibility, and slavishly following, so you are trapped in the past, is total slander and total denial of the deen of Islam as it had survived for all the time up until these particular little shaytans appeared on the scene. And it was 'Abduh's what he called ijtihad, which was nothing other than ignorant opinion, that produced political phenomena such as Ikhwan al-Muslimin which is a machine for the pointless assassination of young Muslim men, without ever having a victory, and the ludicrous phenomenon of Jama'at al-Islamiyya and the other jadidi movements, modernist movements, which have produced excellent directors of Islamic banks in close association with the yahudi leadership.

He said, "This is taqlid. And this is precisely the position of the ordinary people, indeed of the vast majority of all people. Since this is the case, what is required of you is that in all such matters, you do taqlid of the 'alim in whom you have complete trust. If such 'ulama are many, then follow that one who is most knowledgeable." And he says, "This is the portion of ijtihad which falls to the lot of muqaliid with regard to his deen." He says if you are taking your taqlid as he has defined it from the one who knows it- that is your ijtihad! Because nobody can do it for you. You work out, "Yes, this man, he knows it, therefore I will take it from him." Now at that moment, you are a totally free being-the whole Islamic process has begun again! We are at zero point, we are back in Madina, we are at the time of The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and give him peace. So there is protection and renewal in every generation. It is tremendous, it is clear and it is not a reason for despair and not a reason for lamentation, it is a reason for delight. "This is the portion of ijtihad which falls to the lot of the muqallid with regard to his deen. And it is not fitting that the muqallid should abandon the most knowledgeable in favour of someone else, even though that other person also is busy with knowledge. The muqallid must therefore ask at that time about those things which he does not know until he has knowledge of them, just as Allah, Glory be to Him, has said, 'Then ask the people of the Remembrance if you do not know.'" So now we see the big, deep and significant meaning of the ayat-one great portion of the ayat's meaning. "And the one upon whom we ask Allah's blessings and peace commanded that the khalifs after him and his Companions be emulated." He commanded that they be emulated. Abu Bakr, 'Umar, 'Uthman and his Companions be emulated. "The one upon whom we ask blessings and peace also sent his Companions out among the people to give them understanding in the deen, to teach them what had been made incumbent on them, and Allah urged on the entirety of them to go out, 'from every group among you let there be a group who will develop understanding of the deen and who will give warning to their people when they return to them.'"

This ayat then is the seal of this matter. "From every group among you, let there be a group who will develop understanding of the deen and who will give warning to their people when they return to them." This is a complete confirmation of this process which I have been describing. It is in obedience to this ayat that the history of Islam has unfolded. "Now since this matter is something necessary, and there is no way around it, and since they who most deserve to be followed by the uninformed ordinary man, the beginner, who has taken it on himself to worship, or the student seeking right guidance and knowledge of fiqh in the deen of Allah, and those who have the greatest right to be followed are the fuqaha of the Sahaba of Rasulullah, they are those who took their knowledge directly from him, who knew the circumstances for the Revelation, of the commands and prohibitions, the various prophecies, of the different aspects of the Shari'a, the exact pronunciation of the Prophet's words, may Allah bless him and give him peace, who themselves witnessed the accompanying circumstances of these ayats, who spoke to the Prophet, may Allah bless him and give him peace, directly, about most of it, who asked him about it despite the extensive knowledge from the Prophet, which they themselves already had, and their knowledge of meanings of Arabic speech, the illumination of their hearts, and the openness and receptivity of their hearts, such that they were without the least contention, the most knowledgeable of the Imams" - the Sahaba are the Imams of The Messenger Muhammad, may Allah bless him and give him peace, - "and they were those of the Imams most worthy of being followed by taqlid". So the whole thing begins with this taqlid, this broad taqlid of the Ahl al-Madina. "Nevertheless, they only spoke about a few of the problematic events that happened among them, and large numbers of answers to Shari'a questions did not branch out from them in detail. They did not speak about the Shari'a, except with regard to the basic teachings, and certain things that have actually happened. Most of their preoccupation was with the putting into practice of what they knew and the active defence of the entire domain of the deen, the laying down of the firm foundation of the Shari'a of the Muslims." Now in relation to that, there is a story of the Sahaba that is very significant, and it shows the line between this way of Malik's, and this false 'ulama way which is opposed to the right-guided 'ulama. Some people came to a group of Sahaba and said, "Supposing such and such happens, what should we do?" And one of them said, "Has it happened?" They said, "No!" They said, "Well, go away! When it has happened come back, ask it, and we will tell you." You see, they would not leave 'amal. They never, never left 'amal. And if you do not leave 'amal, then your usul, the 'what shall we do?' the 'what are the laws?' which are taken from the source,

nevertheless, will only be brought up where they are needed and are tried. You will not be creating a "what if a mouse falls down the well, then do you do wudu from the well?" mentality. You will only take those things you need for the meaningful survival and practice of your deen, on commonsense principles, from 'amal, from Madinah. He says, "There was among them a degree of difference of opinion in some of the things which they discussed which could keep the muqallid in a perpetual state of confusion, and require of him the kind of reflection and review for which he is not yet prepared. And indeed the full elaboration of questions, resolving of problems, and setting-out the discussions, only came about in response to those matters, the appearance of which was anticipated after the Sahaba were gone." "Consequently, the Tabi'in, the Followers, came and reflected on the differences of opinions of the Companions, and built on the foundations which they had laid down. Then after them came the 'ulama from among the Followers of the Followers. By that time, the occurrences which had happened had already become many and the problematic events had already occurred, while fatwas regarding all of this had branched out into many details. Therefore they gathered together the opinion of them all, and they committed their fiqh to memory." At this point, they do not want people to go off the rails, so they add to it the learning of these steps that have happened because it is part of the story. "Therefore they gathered together the opinion of them all and they committed their fiqh to memory. They sought out the differences of opinion of the earlier generations as well as their areas of agreement, but they were cautious about the matter of this disagreement spreading and of its getting out of control. Therefore they did ijtihad regarding all these parts of the sunna, and of the precise articulation of fundamental principles. They asked questions and they got answers. They built up the foundations of the basic precepts and they made accessible the basic principles. Upon them were delineated the solutions to problems and events and they were put down in writing for the people, and organised. Each of them worked on the basis of the inspiration he was given and the accomplishment to which Allah had guided them. So they became the ultimate in the science of usul and of the specific details of the Shari'a in the matters of agreement and disagreement. And on the basis of this knowledge which had come to them, they made qiyas, analogy, according to the indications, and the similarities that they had got. May Allah be pleased with all of them and may He give them the full extent of the reward of their ijtihad." Now to sum up he says,

"Therefore it is an individual obligation that falls on the ordinary muqallid and the student of knowledge in his beginning stages, to take recourse in his taqlid to these great men, or the explicit texts regarding the problems and events that befall him. Recourse must be had to them regarding all of these matters which are problematic because of the fact that they were immersed in knowledge of shari'a and it literally revolved around them."- The Shari'a of Islam revolved around these great first generation. "They alone have precise understanding of the schools, of who had gone before, and the earlier generations, and that knowledge is enough for all who have come after them in later generations. Nevertheless, it is simply not possible that all of these earlier fuqaha ' can be simultaneous objects of taqlid regarding the most difficult problems and the majority of questions, because of their differences among themselves caused by conflicting opinions about the fundamental principles upon which they built. Moreover, it is not valid for the muqallid to do taqlid of any among them merely on the basis of personal whim," and this is the final point, "Or chance that he has come upon a decision on the basis of what he happened to find the people of his region doing, or his family doing." So you cannot say, 'Oh, I have taken it because my parents did this, or I have taken it because I was born in Malaysia, I have taken this view here.' You have to go right back and start at zero point and take it from there, and then line it up with your present day by that one who teaches what is in conformity with that primal teaching! "Again therefore, the portion of ijtihad that falls to his lot in this case, is that he seek to discuss by reflection which of them was the most knowledgeable and come to know which of them is most worthy of being an object of taqlid from among all of them so that in his practice and his fatwas, the ordinary man can trust him and rely on him and trust that in his acts of worship, he had taken on himself only what that mujtahid had and discerned as correct. The ordinary man therefore must give to the most knowledgeable among the adherents to the schools of these earlier fuqaha, the status which by right, he deserves. It is not permissible for him that he go beyond them in his seekings of fatwas to one who does not follow the opinion of this school. For as some of the Shaykhs have said, 'The Imam is with regard to one who adheres to his school, to his way, like the Prophet, may Allah bless him and give him peace, is with regard to his umma.' It is not permissable for him to go against his Imam. This has been expressed quite correctly, and the correct way will become clear to those who have insight, and eyes with which to see, on the basis of what we have elaborated and the stipulations we have laid down." What he means by that is, once you have got this point, you must take from Malik! And there is no other point of departure for the Islamic phenomenon! And Abu Hanifa, as we will see, does not have what he had. You will see that Imam Shafi', the excellent and distinguished scholar, had knowledge of usul, of the laws, and did

not know the hadith. Ibn Hanbal, a great and honoured man, had great knowledge of hadith but he did not have the usul. Abu Hanifa did not have the usul and did not have the hadith, he had Qur'an but he did not have these other two. And Malik had Qur'an, had the usul and had the hadith! The next stage, insha'Allah, we will finally, at last, assault this Collection that he made, which is "the Well-trodden Path" - the path trodden by The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and give him peace, and his beloved Sahaba, may Allah be pleased with them all. As-Salaamu 'alaykum.

Five

"The forerunners, the first of the Muhajirun and the Ansar, and those who have followed them in doing good, Allah is pleased with them and they are pleased with Him. He has made ready for them Gardens with rivers running under them, timelessly forever without end. That is the great victory." (9:101) As-Salaamu 'alaykum wa Rahmatullah. A'udhu billahi min ash-shaytanir-rajim. Bismillahir-rahmanir-rahim. Now we come to the heart of this matter - I am saying that what is called madhhab and madhhabism, effectively, is unacceptable, and that if you stop with ash-Shafi'i, or stop with Abu Hanifa, or any madhhab of any other name or claim, then you have chosen it as a religion - because it is not the same as that based on the 'amal of Madina. And even if it claims Malik's name and does not connect to 'amal of Madina by conviction, by subscription, and by application, it is not this primal teaching. We are saying that there is only one Islam and it is not narrow. I am not being sectarian. I am not being like the Khawarij. I am not saying we are the only ones who have got it and nobody else has got it, I am saying that is all there is! And it is not narrow, it is broad, and it has never stopped. You must understand this, it is really important. Nor is this saying in some way, 'amal, behaviour, is something disconnected from hadith. The point is that all the 'amal of Madinah that we find acceptable is the proof of the hadith, the evidence of a hadith already acted upon. So hadith knowledge, usuli knowledge, as we defined it earlier you will recall, lock-in to this central issue of the 'amal of Madina as given preference by Imam Malik. If you get the principle then the legal detail and subtle aspects will come to you later. The thing is, if you get this principle then you will find all the legal arguments over the use of qiyas and taqlid and istihsan and so on - all these terms will take their place. You will find it proven for you, demonstrated for you, in a way that does not offend your intellect. But you must take this central thesis, and if you reject this central thesis, then basically you have abandoned what the Sahaba had inherited - once it is presented to you in this manner. So we are really approaching now the point where we come to talk about Imam Malik. And you must grasp the high importance that is placed on him. In fact you will see that, properly speaking, there is no one who has any claim to any higher position than him for the future of the Muslims after the Sahaba and the great ones among the Tabi'in. I am saying that we come to Malik as the one who takes it all and passes it on. And all these others took from him, acknowledged him and accepted him. And now we are going to look at Imam Malik, and talking about him

is something so delightful, and so sweet, and so perfumed and so fine that there is not anything better that you could expect to speak about except the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and give him peace, himself. Now we will look at some statements of Qadi 'Iyad and then move on to another stage of our examination of the matter and we will come from that to alMuwatta' of Imam Malik. Here is one tribute to him from al-Mahdi, who said: "One of the expert authorities of the Mu'tazila from al-Qarawiyyin said, 'I came to Malik ibn Anas and asked him in the presence of the people about a particular question related to predestination,' - this matter of the Mu'tazili debate - 'He gestured to me with his hand that I should keep silent but when the session had finished and the people had gone he said to me, "Ask me now," for he had very much disliked to respond to my question in the presence of the people.'" This Imam who at the time had been a Mu'tazili claimed that not a single question of all the questions the Mu'tazila asked had remained, but that he has asked Malik about it and Malik had answered him regarding them all, establishing by that an irrefutable argument demonstrating the utter falsehood of the Mu'tazili school, until the Mu'tazili had simply run out of questions and had to get up and go away. Now also on this matter of the Mu'tazilis, if you want the final evidence without going into the realm of 'aqida, without going into the realm of the philosophical schools of the mutakallimun, without going to al-Ash'ari, you will find in al-Muwatta' , in the "Book of Qadar", the whole issue defined totally and utterly, and basically being the summation of what this noble man referred to. So that you need never get caught in the Mu'tazili trap and game, which I have likened to the jews in Surat alBaqara asking about the cow to the point that the purpose of the cow is nearly lost. Praising Imam Malik, Qadi 'Iyad says, "It was from this standpoint, of this high estimate of Imam Malik, that ash-Shafi'i argued convincingly against Muhammad ibn al-Hasan ash-Shaybani, the student of Abu Hanifa, in support of the superiority of the knowledge of Malik over that of Abu Hanifa when the two of them argued with each other on this point. Ash-Shafi'i said to him, 'Do you want fairness, or do you just want to exalt one man over another by affiliation?' He said, 'I want to be fair,' ash-Shafi'i said, 'I ask you to answer me, by taking an oath in Allah. Who knows more of the Book of Allah what is that which abrogated and what is the abrogating ayat?' Muhammad ibn alHasan said, 'By Allah, it's your man.' Ash-Shafi'i said, 'Then answer me, by taking an oath in Allah, who is more knowledgeable of the sunna of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and give him peace?' He said, 'By Allah, it is your man.' Ash-Shafi'i said, 'Who then is more knowledgeable of the opinions of the Companions of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and give him peace?' He said, 'By Allah, it is your man.' Ash-Shafi'i said, 'Nothing then remains but qiyas (analogy).' Muhammad ibn al-Hasan said, 'Our man is more given to qiyas,'

and ash-Shafi'i responded, 'But qiyas can only be done on the basis of these other things. On what basis then do you do qiyas?' Ash-Shafi'i continued, 'Yet we do not make, regarding our man, nearly the same claim which all of you make about yours on this issue.'" He says, "May Allah be merciful to ash-Shafi'i and to Muhammad ibn al-Hasan, who indeed, both of them, are most fair-minded, and that which Shafi' had spoken above, is the truth of absolute certainty. Ijtihad, qiyas, and the derivation of ruling can only be done on the basis of usul, therefore whoever is most knowledgeable of the usul, the rulings he derives will have the greatest validity and his qiyas will be the more imbued with truth. But if this is not the case, then whenever the mujtahid's knowledge of the usul is deficient he will be making qiyas based on delusion, and he builds on the brink of a pit." So then he goes on to say, basically that by this examination, by this principle, we find Malik not dependent in any way, and having a complete usul established beyond question, and that it was acknowledged for him by all the people of his time. He then goes on to some material which we will not examine in detail, I will just tell you the outline of it. And that is, he then goes on to a deep examination of Abu Hanifa's position, of Imam ash-Shafi'i's position and Ibn Hanbal's position, with the deepest Islamic courtesy and with the most astute and perspicacious and enjoyable intellectual brightness and capacity, and basically annihilates, to put it mildly, the validity of their claims. Having annihilated them, he then most courteously acknowledges their exquisite manners, their good character and their good intention in all of this. But the point that he comes to in the end is that Islam cannot be based on these excellent scholars' personal idiosyncratic capacity to demonstrate their gifts, and it is not on that Islam can be founded. And Islam does not end up a matter of inkposts - it remains a matter of swords, and blood, and 'ibada. Make no mistake! And he says this is with Malik. And we have the historical evidence to prove it, and we are coming later, insha'Allah to the on-going, post-Malik phenomenon of this Islamic pattern, which you will see is so removed from everything that is being presented today on every side, as somehow, the Islamic phenomenon. And you will recognise it having continued from this time, from the time of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and give him peace, right up until the present day in an unbroken chain. A never 'lost Islam' but an always 'moving Islam', and never claiming or establishing empire or state or instituted power structure, but always like a plant establishing itself, growing up and then withering away and being swept aside.

From Sufyan ibn Uyayna from Ibn Jurayj from Abu Zubair from Abu Salih from Abu Hurayra, may Allah be pleased with all of them: "The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and give him peace, said, 'There will come a time when the people will beat the livers of their camels in search of knowledge and they will not find an 'alim with more knowledge than the one of Madinah.'" "From Ma'n ibn 'Issa Abi al-'Mundhir at-Tamimi from 'Abdullah ibn 'Umar from Abu Musa al-Ash'ari: The one upon who we ask blessings and peace said, 'People will come from the east and the west in search of knowledge and they will not find an 'alim with more knowledge than the 'alim of the people of Madinah.'" Another version from Jabir ibn 'Abdullah says, The Messenger said: "The world will not come to an end until an 'alim appears in Madinah, and people will beat the livers of their camels to come to him. There will never appear on the face of the earth a man with more knowledge than him." Now this great hadith, every single person is in agreement, refers to Imam Malik! Nobody has assigned it to anybody else, and this is in itself a kind of seal on the whole matter. Speaking of this hadith he says: "From the standpoint of the authenticity of its transmission and its complete credibility on the ground of intellectual analysis, there is nothing more that can be added." He then says: "We will mention something of the Salaf of the Imams and what they have said and the testimony of the Imams of Malik and his precedence over everybody else." "Ash-Shafi' said, 'If a transmitted report comes to you from Malik, then grasp it firmly in your hand and never let it go.' And once he said, 'Whenever a transmitted report comes to you then know that Malik is the star of guidance.' Whenever a mention is made of the 'ulama then know that Malik is the star of guidance. Not a single other attained in knowledge the level that Malik reached, by virtue of his prodigious memory, the precision and the perfection with which he did everything, and the absolute care with which he proceeded in all matters. Whoever is searching for authentic hadith has no choice but to go to Malik." Ash-Shafi'i said: "Malik ibn Anas was my teacher, Malik ibn Anas was my master. There is no-one who did more for me out of sheer kindness and generosity than Malik. From him we took our knowledge. I was only a small boy among the youths who served

Malik. I have made Malik the argument of my justification regarding what is between Allah and me." So from him, you see his love for Imam Malik, and this is very, very important. Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam said: "Malik and Sufyan ibn 'Uyayna were like two inseparable friends, but Malik was the radiant star of piercing brightness that could never be reached. Had it not been for Malik and Ibn 'Uyayna, the knowledge of the Hijaz would have been lost forever. 'Abdallah, the father of Mus'ab az-Zubayri said, 'Let there be no doubt, Malik ibn Anas is the lord of all the muslims.' Al-Layth ibn Sa'd would think of Malik and he would say, 'Malik! Malik! Malik!'" "Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Hakam said, 'Whenever Malik expresses an opinion which has not been expressed by those before him, know that Malik's opinion is an irreversible proof which requires you to go against contrary opinions, for Malik is an Imam.' It was said to him, 'Is this also true of the opinions expressed by ashShafi'i?' and he said, 'No!'" "Ibn al-Mubarak said, 'If it were said to me, "Choose for this umma an imam", I would choose for it Malik.'" Abu Ishaq al-Fazari said, 'Malik is an irreversible argument. He is a beloved man about whom you can be completely at rest, and follows closely the reports, [i.e. the hadith] and the ways of those that went before him.' "Ibn Mahdi was asked, 'Who has greater knowledge, Malik or Abu Hanifa?' He said, 'Malik is more knowledgeable than even the main teacher of Abu Hanifa!'" Now al-Muwatta' of Imam Malik, which we have translated into English for the first time in history - basically is the size of an ordinary book, and if you put this book alongside the Qur'an, after the Qur'an, then you have all the documentation you need for Islamic governance and Islamic education from now till the grave, and after the grave, and in the grave. You can put it in the panniers of your donkey, or in your saddle-bag, or in your travelling-kit. The Qur'an of Allah subhanu wa ta'ala, which is not comparable to any book, and alongside it you can put 'al-Muwatta' of Imam Malik, of which Imam ash-Shafi'i said, "After the Book of Allah there is no more reliable book." And you have the complete pattern of Islamic guidance with nothing missing, and with no manner possible for you to go wrong. So this is a very, very significant thing, and you must understand its importance. In every sphere you will find it is relevant, there is not anything outdated in it. You will find it has no place for banking! You will find all the elements of a

sophisticated economy. You will also find that slavery is a necessary and continuing part of the human business, and the political transaction of life. And it has never been abolished, it cannot be abolished! The only issue is whether it is according to the compassionate, wise and fruitful laws laid down in the Islamic phenomenon by the appearance of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and give him peace, and by the event of the Qur'an al-Karim, or a slavery with no rules, which degrades and humiliates and destroys people without ever being questioned - because slavery is today practised! It is practised all over Africa, it is practised inside the united states, it is practised in Europe, it is practised in the Arabian Peninsula - only they do not call it that. But the people are slaves, are more bound in slavery than the worst excesses of the christian and jewish slavers who brought the slaves to the united states of America. But you will there is no avoidance of slavery, and it is a necessary part of society. And the fantasy, the christian lie of presenting themselves as these humanists who wish to abolish slavery, while they are the traders in slaves, is completely exposed by this. So, al-Muwatta' is of the greatest importance for you, for your 'ibada, for the unity of your people, and for the governance of your affairs and for adab between you, between men, and between men and women, and even with children, and with old people, so that everyone is given their place, and everyone is treated with courtesy. So the step we are moving to now, is to see where this goes after Malik. And what I want to do later, is to show you this next stage, to show you that it continued and that it never stopped continuing, because if you lose that, then you will fall into despair, and you will take paths that deviate from the Sirat alMustaqim. It must also be remembered that this basically is the record of 'Umar, this is the triumph of Islamic governance. It is the record of 'Umar, this extraordinary man, this sublime human being of powerful identity, rebellious, energetic, forceful, impatient, thrusting everything aside that he did not think was right. Being brought to tears by it. Finding nothing in his heart but love of his Prophet. Finding total obedience to him. Finding total allegiance to him. Finding a connection and closeness to him so that the one upon whom we ask Allah's blessings and peace said: "O 'Umar, if you go into any valley, Shaytan cannot follow you into it." This bond which he held with the Sahaba, with 'Ali and with Abu Bakr and all the Sahaba, a close bond in love, which produces this amazing phenomenon of his governance, which is the victory of Islam - which allowed Islam to burst out on the world, burst out in an explosion that no rationalist historian has ever been able to explain, either by saying that it was done by the sword, or that it was done by expansionism or anything else. They cannot explain it by rational means. It was done by the light from 'Umar that was taken from his Prophet, may Allah bless him and give him peace.

And then alongside it and this is most important politically and spiritually, alongside it, 'al-Muwatta' is the record of the Madina not only of 'Umar but of 'A'isha, may Allah be pleased with them both. Again, 'A'isha is the prototype of the Islamic woman. She is Umm al-Muminin. She has been named that by God! She has been singled out for special protection and attention in the Qur'an by the Creator of the Universe, to protect her reputation and to keep her safe because of Allah's great love for her. 'A'isha, may Allah be pleased with her, is the Islamic woman. And the significant thing is that she comes as wife, not as daughter and not as mother, she comes as wife, and as the wife of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and give him peace. And you know that the very story of it is a proof of this 'wifeness' over and against any other relationship, because as you know she was from the family of Abu Bakr as-Siddiq and when the time came for her to enter the house of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and give him peace, her mother took her on a camel and rode to his house. When they arrived at the house, remember she was a girl, the camel got down and they got off, and they were covered in dust from the ride. She took some water from her waterbag and wiped her face to get the dust off it, to make her look pretty, and wiped her hair, and put her scarf on her, and then she said to her, "Come, come with me!" They went into the house and she in effect said to the Prophet, may Allah bless him and give him peace, "Now I take my daughter and put her into your care." She said to 'A'isha, "Now you have come from me and you are going to him. You have left our household and you have entered his household." She said, "You protect her and give her all that she requires and give her safety and provision as we gave her safety and provision. Now our contract is finished and your contract is begun." She left and that was it. From that you see the whole saga of the girl becoming woman, wife, and Umm alMu'minin. And so you see someone through the years, laughing and tumbling and knocking her husband to the floor, and delightful arguments and laughter and forgivenesses and the tumult of a happy household. You see the troubles and the travails of the years that come, and you see her absorbing the deen of Islam, and they you see her through these last years of the delegations when the one upon whom we ask blessings and peace was exhausted. And it is from her that we get this moving and extraordinary picture of the one upon whom we ask blessings and peace, exerting himself to the point where he could not stand to pray. And so the famous saying of 'Half the deen from 'A'isha', is not flattery, is not anything else but that you will see in the al-Muwatta how much comes from her, and you will see in it the picture of Islamic womanhood. And all this is in al-Muwatta' . So you get a picture of a complete functioning Islam with its khalif, Amir al-Mu'minin. And you get the presence and guidance and observation and behaviour of 'A'isha, Umm al-Mu'minin. These are essential elements in al-Muwatta' .

Now we will have a few more statements about Malik to complete the matter. "Yahya ibn Ma'in said, 'Malik constitutes one of the manifest proofs of Allah, over and against all human beings whom He created.' He said, "Malik was an Imam in hadith and Yahya ibn Sa'id used to give Malik precedence over all the other students of al-Zuhri." "Ayyub ibn Suwayd said, 'Malik is the Imam of the Abode of the Hijra and the Sunna. He is a man of unquestionable integrity and reliability. He is absolutely trustworthy.'" He also said, "Never have I seen a single person at all, who was more excellent in the area of hadith, than Malik. There was not a single person after the Tabi'in more faithful in hadith than he." "Al-Tustari said, 'Abu 'Abdullah az-Zubayr ibn Ahmad az-Zubayri while we were discussing and studying the different madh-habs among ourselves said, "With the madh-hab of Malik we can dispense with the madh-hab of all these others taken together, but the madh-hab of not a single one of them is enough for us to dispense with the madh-hab of Malik."'" "Humayd ibn al-Aswad said, 'Malik said: "After the death of 'Umar ibn al-Khattab, the Imam of the people among us in Madinah became Zayd ibn Thabit, the Imam after Zayd ibn Thabit was 'Abdullah ibn 'Umar,"' - and then he goes on to say "and from these men it all came to Malik." All the knowledge of the earlier people came through three men - Ibn Shibab azZuhri, Bukayr ibn 'Abdullah ibn al-Ashajj, and Abu Zinad ibn Abi Dhakwan. The knowledge of these last three became the exclusive legacy of Malik ibn Anas. "Abu Ishaq al-Jabnayani said, 'The only madhhab is the madhhab of the people of Madinah, the madhhab of Malik.' "Malik," ibn Waddah said, 'Malik is all you need.' And then, Abu 'Ali ibn Abi Hilal said, "An-Nasa'i was asked about Mu'awiya. He replied, 'Islam is a single, pure abode, and the Companions, may Allah be pleased with them, are the doors to that abode. Whoever speaks evil about any one of them has broken into that house.'" Abu 'Ali ibn Abi Hilal continued, 'and it is my expressed opinion that Malik is the handle by which that door is opened. Whoever lays hand on the handle has only desire to open the door and enter. May Alah be pleased with all of the Companions without exception.'" And so we come to al-Muwatta ', and the power of the continuance of this salafi teaching is that in al-Muwatta ' we find gathered these three vital elements, usul, which allows one to make legal judgements on all necessary aspects of life, or open the way to a clear judgement of things that have now arrived that are not from the primal teaching. We find in it a body of hadith by the muhaddith who is over all the muhaddithun, who is recognised by everybody, and it is enough that Malik said it that everybody accepts it. Everytime that it appears in al-Bukhari, that in itself is a

proof, in Muslim, that is a proof, with Malik's giving it credence, it is accepted by everybody. So it is enough that you take the hadith in al-Muwatta ' to begin with and you have everything you need. Then when you go from it, you go from a sound base. The people used to go just with al-Muwatta ' , just with the hadith in it. Remember that there were many, many hadith, but he only considered these necessary. There are only around eight hadith by Ja'far as-Sadiq, there are only a small number of hadith by this one, only a small number by that one. When Malik died, they found a room with one wall covered with books from ceiling to floor and they were all hadith. And he had known them all, and had examined them all, and he had made al-Muwatta , and in it he put those hadith that were necessary. In the first version there were more than three times, I think, the number of hadith that are in the final version, then he said, "That is all you need." He knew these hadith but he dispensed with them. He said, "That is enough." So it became within the compass of people to take this knowledge and apply it. You have to get to 'amal. You have to get to 'amal. You have to get to 'amal! And this is THE necessary element in the whole affair. Later we are going to look at how people took this thing, as it were, that had come down till it narrowed, the whole stream, to Malik, and how it brached out again and went all over the Islamic world. And we will take instances from these examples and you will be astonished. I think now we can say at this point, that we have seen how we arrive at Malik. And we have seen also, the high estimate that is made of Malik. And we have seen what he has based this knowledge on, which is a living, social phenomenon, encompassing a whole galaxy of people, a whole city - it is based on the record of a city, and that city is acceptable to him, and is honourable to him, is pleasing to him, and in confirmed by him. And without that, there is only bitterness in the hear, there is only retreat, there is only withdrawal from society and criticism, and unless you embrace Madinah you cannot honestly say that you are able to embrace the lord of Madinah, the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and give him peace. And love for them is love for him, and proof of him, of his victory. No Muslims take the full teaching that came from the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and give him peace, and arrive at Malik, and take it on, but they leave their houses and go out in hijra or jihad and involve in it their family and their on-going generations. If they go back to their house they have not received the Message. As-Salaamu 'alaykum.

Six

A'udhu billahi min ash-shaytanir-rajim. Bismillahir-rahmanir-rahim. Now we come to the final stage of the commentary we have been making on excerpts from the book of Qadi 'Iyad, the Tartib al Mudarik , and we come to a very significant stage, because we have now left behind the first salafi phenomenon of the arrival of Islam by the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and give him peace, on his Sahaba, and then we have gone to its passing on through the Sahaba to the Tabi'in and to Tabi'in of Tabi'in in this salafi community in which we found the utmost excellence, so that we could follow them and clearly guide our way by them as the basis and foundation of Islam and we have heard the ayat in which Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala says: "This day we have completed your deen for you and named it Islam." Nothing is to be added, nothing has to be put on to this, nothing is acceptable after this prophetic phenomenon of nabawiyya which is two-fold, Kitab wa Sunna. The Book of Allah, Glory be to Him and may He be exalted!, which is mubin, and in all matters of shari'a gives clear ayats. And in no matter concerning shari'a is there ambiguity or is it of a matter that requires analogy or hidden interpretation or vision and special insight. These ayats that require some illumination of the heart, some quickening of the ruhani energy, are clearly defined as being separate in nature from those defining the Shari'a of Islam. The Shari'a of Islam involves all matters concerning the bodies of the human species - every aspect of the social nexus that has in it injunctions as to how to behave. So it is without ambiguity. And these do not interfold, they do not cross, they do not merge into a barzakh of uncertainty. They are two seas and there is a barzakh between them, separating them, not joining them. This is the first thing to understand that we must confirm about the Book of Allah, Glory be to Him and may He be exalted! Then the second part of nabawiyya is sunna, and we have said that the sunna of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and give him peace, is complete and is demonstrated and is made effective and happens, in the event of the salafi phenomenon of Madinah al-Munawwara. And that the lights of Madina alMunawwara are not its houses, not its streets, but those Sahaba who were in it. And that he died with 10,000 of his people around him in that city and this is the great mass of Sahaba who transmit to the great mass of the Tabi'in, in Madinah alMunawwara. It is this Madinan transmission and this Madinan 'amal, and this Madinan behaviour which takes its superiority over all estimates and all measurements that you can make. And this is recorded in its time and immediately afterwards and in the clear record of Imam Malik, in the al-Muwatta , giving us the

indelible, ineradicable record, unquestioned by any single authority in Islam, of that Salafi experience, while within that first nexus of the Tabi'in of Tabi'in. This must be understood, and this riwaya of Imam Malik's makes him our Imam for the whole of Islam, and with no shadow on his reputation, on his excellence, on his knowledge, on his 'ibada, and on his impeccable character and his superb judgements. "At-Tustari said: Abu 'Abdallah az-Zubayr ibn Ahmed az-Zubayri said while we were discussing and studying the different madhhabs among ourselves, 'With the madhhab of Malik we can dispense with the madhhab of all those others taken together but the madhhab of not a single one of them is enough for us to dispense with the madhhab of Malik, we cannot do without it.'" Then Humayd ibn al-Aswad said: "Malik said after the death of 'Umar ibn al-Khattab, the Imam of the people among us in Madinah became Zayd ibn Thabit. The Imam after Zayd ibn Thabit was 'Abdullah ibn 'Umar.' 'Ali ibn al-Madini said, 'twenty-one men from among those who followed the ra'y of Zayd ibn Thabit and lived by it, took their knowledge directly from him - Qasiba, Kharija ibn Zayd, 'Ubaydullah ibn 'Abdullah ibn 'Utba ibn Mas'ud, al-Qasim ibn Muhammad, Abu Bakr ibn 'Abd al-Rahman, Salim ibn 'Umar ibn al-Khattab, Sa'id ibn Musayyab, Aban ibn 'Uthman and Sulayman ibn Yasar. All the knowledge of these great men became the exclusive legacy of three, Ibn Shihab az-Zuhri, Bukayr ibn 'Abdullah ibn al-Ashajj and Abu Zinad ibn Abi Dhakwan. The knowledge of these last three became the exclusive legacy of Malik ibn Anas.'" And then we concluded with Abu 'Ali ibn Abi Hilal who said: "An-Nasa'i was asked about Mu'awiya and he said, 'Islam is a single, pure abode and the Sahaba are the door to that abode. Whoever speaks evil about any one of them has broken into that abode.''' Abu 'Ali ibn Abi Hilal continued, "and it is my expressed opinion that Malik is the handle by which that door is open. Whoever lays hands on the handle has only to desire to open the door and enter. May Allah be pleased with all the Companions without exception." I said at the beginning that in the development of Islam we found many groups and developments through the natural growth of the Islamic world and in different geographical places, and impacting on different cultures or different aspects of different jahiliyyas, and naturally, because of a tremendous respect through this Salafi experience for any form of knowledge, an openness to any knowledges that these jahili people had acquired. And with all of these things came many disputes and many argumentations and so we find all these things like the Mu'tazila and the Khawarij, and then you find the debate about hadith.

Then into the modern age you find this phenomenon which we examined at the beginning if you will recall, which is the phenomenon of the modernists coming from al-Afghani and bringing ideas in through 'Abduh and Rashid Rida which turned over the whole business, and I have presented you the case for their having led the muslim people astray and the result being the defeat of the muslims right across the board. And saying that, then the attempt at a salafi recovery without going to the Salafi phenomenon in itself, was wrong, because it was rightly affirming hadith, but wrongly bereft of usul, and wrongly bereft of 'amal on which the whole thing is based, because it is basically a Janna-oriented religion. The point, if I dare say such a thing, of Islam, is to be pleasing to Allah, and therefore to desire the Garden and to do what will take you to the Garden, and nothing else - nothing replaces that. Nothing replaces that. No concept, no idea, no adherence, no alliance, no vision, no batini illumination replaces the 'amal on which you will be judged and which will decide your place. Again and again in Qur'an in the wonderful Makkan suras when it says, "What is the steep ascent?" and it lists thing after thing after thing, every one of them is 'amal, and not one of them has a batini dimension at all, it is all behaviour. Now in all these diversions and separations and conflicts that have divided the Muslims, some most invigoratingly, and some with great bitterness, and some with bloodshed - but the matter is important and we must respect that - there remains for us the difficult issue, especially for those people whose hearts are alive and who have glimpses and yearnings and aspirations for their hearts to be illuminated and to experience lights and to have some batini capacity. And there is no escaping that it seemed that a polarization took place between scholarship and batini knowledge. Now since it is quite clear that we have no escape from having an alive heart and from having inward impulse and inward states from our recitation of Qur'an, from our 'ibada, from du'a, from our calling upon Allah, from our rembering Allah, dhikran kathiran, it is perfectly clear, and from the Qur'an and hadith, that these matters are of great import. But we cannot escape that none of this has any worth if the Shari'a of Islam is abandoned, and this is not a matter of your correct personal, moral behaviour alone. It is not a matter of your being clean in a dirty world while you cannot clean it. Islam by its nature demands of us, this deen, that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala so sublimely declared complete, was demonstrably one which involved the transformation of the society. And the element of the transformation of the society was the establishment of the hudud, and living within the hudud, and fulfilling the command of Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, in all matters whether it was inheritance, marriage, war or commerce. But the truth of the matter is you find one group clinging to ahwal wa maqamat and another group clinging to legal matters. And the truth of the matter is you find some of these people having a correct, personal, moral, acceptable behaviour while abandoning the social obligation. But equally you find among these other people a correct legal application while not insisting on the governance of the Muslims by the Muslims. Both parties have among them those who are incomplete. So they have not a protected batin, and they

have not an enforced shari'a. So these can reject those and say they are right, and those reject these and say they are right. When we look into this matter that I am now taking you to, and what we have already examined, we do not find this split! Now in what I am about to describe to you, I have taken three examples, and these three men were men who governed, who were in this dynamic relationship, that I have described, with the amir. In other words we have a dynamic relationship between amirate and the fulfilment of the task of mufti and qadi, in other words the establishment and the insistence, by complete knowledge based on taqlid arriving at ijtihad, the capacity for ijtihad, on forcing governance to adhere to what Allah has commanded as we have described, and continuing in that until it became unbearable, even to the point of torture, and sometimes to the point of death. But each to the point of his own limits in what he could bear, because each one would be dealing with a different conflict. And at the point that these people could not sustain and impose the hudud as they understood it, their next move was to make hijra, and having made hijra, then to establish the deen as they understood it, where they were, gather the people and return in jihad - or go elsewhere in jihad. And this, cyclically, is the history of those people that I have described here, and that I will not call the madhhab of Malik in the scholastic sense. It is not Maliki in the sense of pertaining to Malik, it is that Malik recorded the 'amal of Madinah. I am saying there is one madhhab which is the madhhab of Islam and Malik was on it! And now we come to these people who come after these exalted Tabi'in and Tabi'in of Tabi'in. We come now to this river flooding out to all parts of the umma, and you will find they all pattern in the same way. And you will find that these jihads repeat themselves in North Africa and in West Africa. We even find a hundred years ago in brazil, a group of West African slaves following this Salafi way that Malik taught, gathering themselves together, overthrowing their masters, and making an Islamic republic in the middle of Bahia and ruling for the same period as the Murabitun did in spain when they cleaned out the people who had gone off the path of Islam before them. Exactly the same cycle, exactly the same time span that you find in primal Madinah, that you find every time one of these jihads takes place, whether it is 'Uthman dan Fodio, or the Sanussi or the people of Bahia every time, exactly the same phenomenon with the same pattern. Now, we come to these men, and we will examine their lives then we will draw our conclusions. And I am saying that the conclusion that it will take us to, will finish for us the split, on the one hand, between any genuine batini sciences and correct desire for knowledge of these matters and, on the other, genuine Islamic governance and hudud in the social and personal matters that concern our 'ulama.

The first of the three people is called 'Abd al-Malik ibn Habib. Qadi Abu Warid ibn al-Faradi says in his book about the men of Andalusia: "He was 'Abd al Malik ibn Habib ibn Sulayman ibn Harun ibn Jalhama ibn 'Abbas ibn Mirdas al-Sulami, and he was known by the kunya, Abu Marwan, but I have transmitted from the hand-written manuscript of al-Hakam al-Mustansir Billah that he was 'Abd al-Malik ibn Habib ibn Rabi'a ibn Sulayman. His father was known as Habib al-Attar, the maker of scent and perfume." Ibn al-Faradi says, "He was a descendant of one of the mawali, one of the former slaves of this tribe." So right at the beginning, our Imams, are from the lowest element in society, and again and again you will find in this Islamic flow of great, great human beings that many of them were slaves, sons of slaves, sons of sons of slaves. So there is no aristocracy! There is no aristocracy! People rise according to their limits and according to their spiritual capacities. "He transmitted in Andalusia, and during the year 208, according to some 207, he set out for the east in quest of knowledge. He received knowledge by direct transmission." "Ibn Harith said that when he returned and settled in our city, word of his superior status in knowledge and in transmission soon spread far and wide. Consequently the Amir, 'Abd ar-Rahman ibn al-Hakam, moved him to Cordoba and he raised him to the rank of the mufti and he remained in that office for some time along with Yahya ibn Yahya, head of the Muftis of Cordoba, engaged continually in the giving of counsel and in debate." So here, the Andalusians were being governed by the son of a slave. "'Abd al-Malik," he says, "was the 'alim of Andalusia. 'Abd al-Malik was a storehouse of knowledge. He had many books. He was a grammarian skilled in poetry. He had knowledge of the science of genealogy and he was an historian. Kings came to see him, the children of kings and the people of courtesy." So the kings were coming to the slave to be told what to do. It was said, 'I have seen 'Abd al-Malik leaving the Jami'a Mosque being followed by almost 300 students, consisting of students of hadith of the portions allotted to inheritance, of fiqh, and of pure arabic speech.'" "It was said to Abu Hazim, 'What does your wealth consist of?' He said, 'I have two kinds of wealth; satisfaction with whatever is in my hand, and utter despair from ever having what is in the hands of others. But I saw that I have two wealths also -

wealth in the outward and public aspect of my appearance, and poverty in the private sphere of my life.'" "Ibn al-Faradi also made mention of him in the books compiled on the various generations of poets. He presented him as one of the leading figures among them, and said, 'He combined with his imamate in fiqh the most profound knowledge of literature. He was a master craftsman in his own writing across a variety of fields of knowledge. He was a faqih. He was a mufti. He was a grammarian. He was a philologist. He was a genealogist. He was an historian. A supreme master in the field of poetry - a most excellent, free-spirited and eloquent poet. He was a compiler of words.'" One of the Shaykhs has recorded that when 'Abd al-Malik came to Egypt on his journey in search of knowledge, he came on a party of people, who, after the custom of the Egyptians, had set out in advance from their city to meet the approaching traveller and show him kindness and hospitality. It was also their custom that whenever a man of some status and good appearance came they would try to discover what kind of man he was, and they would use firasa, which is a science that is part of nabawiyya which the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and give him peace, gave to some of his Sahaba, which was that he would teach them how to see by the outward appearance of the face what sort of man it was. "They had been very successful at doing this, and then 'Abd al-Malik came, who was a very fine looking man, and some of the people said, 'It is a faqih.' The others said, 'No, no, no. It is a poet.' The others said, 'No, no. This is a great speaker.' Finally by the time he arrived they were all having an argument about him. They said, 'What are you?' He said, 'You are all right! Every one of you is right. Everything you have said about me, it is all true. I do all of these things very well, and you have proved how expert you are in your science by your identification of me.'" Next we look at Abu 'Amr al-Harith ibn Miskin Muhammad ibn Yusuf, the former slave of Muhammad ibn Ziyad ibn 'Abd al-Aziz ibn Marwan. He received his knowledge by sama', by direct transmission from Ibn Qasim, Ashhab, and Ibn Wahb, who were among the greatest of Malik's students. He gathered into a single work all the knowledge he had received by transmission from them and he arranged it chapter by chapter. He was one of the greatest of their students. He also sat with al-Layth ibn Sa'd, Malik and Mufaddal bin Fadala, before their deaths. "Ahmad ibn Hanbal was asked his opinion about this man, when he was given the position of Qadi, and he said, praising him very highly, 'Nothing but good has ever reached my ears about him.' And he went on to say, 'They used to look lightly on

taking from the other people that were with him, but they had to take from him.' Abu Hatim said, 'Ibn Miskin was a man who always spoke the truth.'" Notice these moral and spiritual qualities which we are designating in these men. "Abu 'Umar al-Kindi said in a book The Generations of the Qadis of Egypt, in that large chapter dedicated to those who were descendants of slaves, and these are our Imams, 'Al-Harith ibn Miskin became the mufti of Egypt on behalf of the 'Abbasid king al-Mutawakkil who had given him an official letter empowering this qadi while the king was in Alexandria. But when Ibn Miskin received and read the official letter of appointment he refused to accept the position. His companions forced him to accept it, and they agreed to the stipulation that when the time came, (as it would come) they would come to help him. Thus Ibn Miskin made his way to al-Fustat, the capital of Egypt, and sat down in the Jami'a Mosque to give judgement. Both his legs were crippled and he was carried to the mosque on an open litter carried by two men. He would sometimes ride on a donkey once someone had lifted him up and draped his legs on either side of it.'" This is the man who was governing a nation. "Abu Muhammad 'Abdullah said in his book, 'Ibn Miskin transmitted the following from Ibn Wahb from Malik regarding what a man would do who is given a directive by a powerful person to take on a particular job which he hates to do, but which he fears, should he refuse it, that he will be whipped, lose his life and have his house demolished. Malik said, 'If it is a matter of his house being demolished, his back being flogged with a whip or his being put in prison, it is better for him that he refuse the directive and take the consequences with patience. If it is a matter of his blood being spilled, I do not know what the ultimate limit that you can expect from a man in this case is.'" See the perfection of his judgement! "Perhaps there can be some allowance for him to obey the directive and take the job." How fine, how perfect the mizan of Imam Malik. "Yunus said, "Al-Harith ibn Miskin used to transmit this report, but then he accepted appointment under the 'Abbasids as qadi. 'By Allah', he said to himself, 'do you think I am still worthy to give fatwa according to what Malik has taught?'" "Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Warith said, 'We were with al-Harith one day, when 'Ali ibn al-Qasim as Kufi al-Madani came to him and said, "During my sleep I saw the people gather together within the Haram at Makka and I said, 'Why have you all gathered here?' They said, "'Umar ibn al-Khattab came and commanded al-Harith

ibn Miskin to sit in judgement over the people.' I saw him in my dream take alHarith and nail his seat to the wall giving him authority, and then depart. I followed after him. When he sensed that I was behind him, 'Umar ibn al-Khattab in the dream turned and said, 'What do you want?' And he said, 'I want to look at you.' He said, 'Go back to al-Harith and give him my salaams. Say to him, 'Become a qadi. Hand down the judgement between your people and do it because of this sign that I have given you. I will give you a proof, that when you were imprisoned in Iraq you stood up in the dark one night, and stumbled and fell to the floor, and injured your finger so that it began to bleed. You called to Allah with a du'a that you made that night and the next morning you got out of prison.' Al-Harith, when he heard this, said, 'You have spoken the truth. For this was a thing that was witnessed by no one except Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala!'" The du'a which is very beautiful says: "O You who are with me always in every adversity, O You who come to my aid in every trouble, oh You who make me feel at peace when I am left alone in desolation, give Your blessings on Muhammad, may Allah bless him and give him peace, and his family and make for me an opening and a way to escape from the trouble I am in." Muhammad ibn al-Warith continued his record of Ibn Miskin. He said: "Ibn Miskin was given an order, 'Wear the black robe!' He refused to do it. Thus the governor of Egypt spoke to al-Mutawakkil on the matter. Al-Mutawakkil said, 'Send an official letter saying that if he continues to refuse to wear the black robe, then have his upper legs pulled out of their sockets.' The governor of Egypt sent out messengers to apprehend Ibn Miskin. Everyone betrayed him. Nobody came to his aid, the close ones or the far ones." But look what he was refusing - to let his knowledge make him an elite over the people, to make a church out of Islam that would separate him from the people by a distinctive robe. "Al-Tahawi transmitted from Muhammad ibn Sayyid: I came upon Ibn Miskin at the time that the messengers of the governor were trying to intimidate him. He was by this time very distressed and knew that he was determined to do something dictated by the truth and this had offended the whim and passion of the sultan. And so I said, 'O Shaykh! Whatever you do, do not let this scene that is happening to you make you lose your courage. Remember that Ibrahim, 'alayhi salam, was betrayed by all the people of the earth, yet no harm came to him because Allah was with him. Ibn Miskin embraced me and said, 'By Allah! You've given me new life, my brother, by what you have just said. May Allah give you life in return and a most joyous and happy one.'"

"So they brought him before the Governor of Egypt. The official letter of alMutawakkil was brought out and read in his presence. Ibn Miskin said, 'I will not wear the black!' Then a man got up and said, 'I have seen the Shaykh wear some of these striped coarse woollen garments from Yemen.' Al-Harith said, 'That is true, I have worn such garments.' And the Governor was moved and said, 'Well then, put on one of them. Put on a robe like that.' And Ibn Miskin said, To this, I have no objection' and the Governor said 'I am content,' and worte to al-Mutawakkil who then removed his objection against the Shaykh. Allah fulfilled the promise." Now he speaks of the achievements and the work of this great man. Al-Kindi says: "Al-Harith ibn Miskin gave the order that the proponents of ash-Shafi'i and Abu Hanifa be forced to leave,' - because remember, they were making judgements that were not in accord with the 'amal of Madinah - "Indeed he prohibited the proponents of Abu Hanifa from coming to the Jami'a Mosque and broke up all their circles of instruction. He commanded that the carpets that they had put down between the pillars of the mosque be torn out and removed. He stopped most of the mu'adhdhin from calling the adhan because they were not calling it according to Madinah. He prohibited the descendants of Quraysh and the Ansar from receiving special gifts of food during the month of Ramadan. He saw that all mosques were restored to sound condition. He constructed pipelines. He made waterways for providing the people with easy access to clean water. He saw that the bay and harbour of Alexandria was dredged and deepened. He made it prohibited for lands to be set aside before him. He made it forbidden for the adhan to be called for funeral prayers. He had Qur'an reciters whipped, who recited the Qur'an as if it was the melodious music of a singer. He was the first man who appointed a trustee to keep careful watch over the copies of the Qur'an in the Jami'a mosque. He would not go to visit the Governors of the land nor would he even give them greetings. He put a curse on the christian sorcerers and had them put to death. He put to death a christian who insulted the Prophet, may Allah bless him and give him peace, after first having had the christian flogged on the back in accordance with the hadd punishment for slander. He whipped him for slander and then the man was executed for insulting the Prophet. He banished from Egypt all who slandered 'A'isha and had their backs flogged by the hadd punishment for slander." This is one man that we are talking about, who had all these qualities, and look how he brought to life the community. Look at the social work that he did. Look at how all his life was for other people and the protection of the deen of Islam. Now we come to the last of these three people. There is much, much more about these people, I am just taking salient points to awaken your imagination and spirit about the quality of a human being. Abu Sayyid Sahnun, another of these great men.

"Now he was of pure Arab stock, and his son said, 'Father, is it true that we are of pure stock from Tanukh?' And his father said, 'And what is so important about knowing that?' But I kept persisting in the question until he finally said, 'Yes, and it will not be of the least value to you before Allah if you do not have taqwa of Him.'" "He was called Sahnun because he was like a bird with very sharp sight, but his given name was 'Abd as-Salaam. He was called Sahnun after the bird of sharpest sight because of his clarity and astuteness in questions of fiqh. I heard Sahnun say, 'A particular question of fiqh became impossible for me to solve to the point that I wanted to return to Madinah to find the answer until the answer came clear.'" "Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Tamin says in his book, 'Sahnun was a man of highest integrity and complete reliability. He was hafidh of knowledge. He was a thoroughly accomplished faqih. He combined excellent attributes in his personality rarely combined together. He was genuine in his scrupulousness - in his war'a. He was aggressive, and utterly uncompromising in defence of the truth. He was among the greatest of the zuhad in regard to things of this world. He wore rough garments and he ate coarse food. He was generous in times of hardship and he was generous in times of ease. He never accepted one single thing from the sultans, yet he would often given his companions sums of money of the order of 30 pieces of gold.'" "Abu Bakr al-Maliki said, 'But with all of this Sahnun was a man with a very soft heart. He cried very much. His fear of Allah was visible to all. He was modest. He was humble. There was nothing artificial about him. He was noble in his conduct. He had excellent manners. His heart was sound. It did not have the least enmity in it towards other people. He was severe in his opposition to the people of all types of bida. He feared the censure and the slander of no man in anything pertaining to Allah. Acceptance of his Imamate spread wide and far in the east and the west.'" In other words he was one of the great Imams. "The people of his age freely acknowledged his Imamate. They concurred in affirming his excellence and his precedence over others. His excellent attributes were very many. There has been a whole book compiled about his good qualities. It has been said that Sahnun used to sit in front of his doorstep in order to teach, and we would sit directly on the ground with the exception of those among us who brought mats, and when he had finished he would say, 'Now stand up as if you were one man, and disperse!'" "'Abd al-Jabbar ibn Khalid said, 'We used to receive direct transmission from Sahnun of hadith at his house on the coastline. One day he came out with a shovel on his shoulder and a wheelbarrow. He said, "My slave-boy has a fever and I cannot teach you today. I have to do his work. When I am finished I will come back and I will teach you hadith." I said to him, "Let me go and do the digging and you give the hadith. When I come back you can review for me the bit I have missed."

He did this, and when I came back to him, his lunch had been put before him. It was barley bread and stale oil.' 'Isa said, 'When Sahnun remained silent, it was for the sake of Allah, and when he spoke it was for the sake of Allah. When he had the desire to speak he would remain silent and when he had the desire to remain silent he would speak.'" This is a protected tasawwuf because it is not accessible, touchable, visible or speakable. It is buried in the hearts of great men of knowledge of Kitab wa Sunna. And if we take this path, there is no need for anything visible on the face of the earth that you can call sufism, or anything that to the ear you can speak about as sufism, because here we have the pure Salafi phenomenon which is not what the people today who talk about it mean. Because those people do not speak out about governance, and about the limits and the hudud where things that go wrong demand punishment, and demand putting right. And therefore they are liars or hypocrites to say salafi when they are within earshot and eye-sight of what is forbidden and they do not speak. But those other men have never compromised on this and have taken the path that I have indicated to you, which is that they have stood their ground. They have not gone underground. They have not slandered. They have not denounced. They have not made a legal judgement against people unless they were before them in order to be judged and found guilty and punished according to the right - or released as innocent. This is the Islam of the Sahaba, and this is the Islam of Madinah, and this is the Islam of Imam Malik, and there is no better, and there is no other, and that is what I have come to tell you. As-Salaamu 'alaykum.

Summary
Part One: 'Amal

What we want to look at is not a specific piece of information. It is not that we want to examine the hadith or we want to examine what happened in the construction of the Muwatta', for example. What we want to see, first of all, is what we might perceive as the first construct, the first understanding of what the total Islamic reality was. Kitab wa Sunna, the Book of Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, and the Sunna of Rasulallah, sallallahu 'alayhi wa salim. And we want to observe in the natural, inevitable, inescapable evolution of the Muslim Community and its intellectual apparatuses, how the Muslims' perception of their own fundamental foundational reality, in the Book and the Sunna, altered and changed, in both their perception of it and in their method of deriving it, rather than some suggestion that the Sunna changed or a different version took place. We would find in these changes that in the process of change certain details went to the wall, certain details got crushed, certain things changed emphasis. But what we want to do in the end of the day is to find out, perceive, be conscious of, the relationship between the basic methodology, from which the Muslims derived their fundamental knowledge of the Book and the Sunna, and its inevitable connection with the political power reality of the time. So, (to start at the end before we get to the beginning) we would say that we will perceive that the'aqida, both from the point of view of kalam, from the point of view of the method by which the 'ulama' make their statements, and the power structure itself of an amir with a government, with an army, with judges who can hold and bind and punish and intimidate, that this political structure is wedded inexorably to this dynamic, live machinery of the methodology of Islam. In other words, correctly speaking, in Islam there is no way you can separate the power elite from a chosen ideological position of what will be the character, identity, the method, the nature of the Islamic phenomenon in its root form. The great historical example of this we would take as the Islam in Spain at the time of the Murabitun, of the people of Ibn Tashfin; that Islam having its foundation in the school of the 'amal of the Ahl al-Madinah while at the same time having its political connection to the rule of government in the East. The arrival of the Muwahhidun, was headed by Ibn Tumart, who, to take power, presented himself as a Mahdi having access to a book which contained esoteric knowledge, which he said he derived from the Ahl al-Bayt and from Sayyiduna 'Ali. And with it came this ideological heavyweight who was Imam al-Ghazzali. The Ghazzali position became a dominant factor. It was not particularly in relation to the sufic phenomenon, but it was Imam al-Ghazzali in his role as the one who presented a view of kalam, of the 'how-you-talk-about' Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, and what is

now known as the Ash'ari position. The Ash'ari kalam talks about Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, in terms of necessary attributes, the mother attributes, the acts of Allah, the attributes of Allah, and the essence of Allah, and so on and so on ... and later is the formula which becomes popularized right down to the time of Ibn 'Ashir where he divides the deen into the kalam of Ash'ari, the fiqh of Malik, and the tasawwuf of Imam Junayd. So, this whole trend comes by a change in political leadership. Equally, one could write a history of the Azhar University and its fiqh and you will find that the absolute basis of the deen was radically redefined according to whether the Fatimis were there, or whether the dynasties were there, or whether the Uthmaniyya were there, or whether the English and the French were there, or, and we will complete it by saying, whether the Americans and Israelis were there. And you will find that with every change in the political structure, the very foundations of the deen were redefined in harmony with the political reality. Now, since everyone says today that the Muslims have been defeated, that there is nowhere an Islamic government, there is nowhere a country governing by Kitab wa Sunna. Although many express and confirm the formula theoretically of Kitab wa Sunna, every common Muslim on the hajj from every country complains to you that in his country it is not the case. We will also find on examination, and this is still the end of the affair, before we come to the beginning, that the current regimes of the Muslims - whatever one wants to say about them politically - have a common, dominant concept of the foundations of the deen. There is a common ideological position that has been taught from Indonesia to the Maghrib. There are certain basics that are accepted and, within that, there are some more radical and some less radical. There is a conservative dimension that is presented with certain characteristics, and there is a radical, modernist dimension that presents itself with other characteristics. And these two aspects, the modernist and the highly traditional dominant school, are in uncomfortable and often intellectually contradictory cohabitation. Whatever this 'aqida and this foundational basis and this methodology is, has to be examined in the light of the plight and the dilemma of the Muslims today in their passivity, acquiescence and inability to establish the deen in terms of a functioning shari'a with an activated fiqh. What we want to look at will take us from this primal material directly to the situation today with the proposition that if one wishes an activist Islam, of people of Kitab wa Sunna, founded on the Book of Allah and the Sunna of Rasulallah, sallallahu 'alayhi wa salim, and accepting the Khulafa' ar-Rashidun and the Salaf as our model, and Madina as its place, then we need to know what we would require to activate the living Islam. We find that Zayd ibn Thabit said:

"When you see the people of Madinah doing something, know that it is a Sunna." Malik said, "There were men from the people of knowledge among the Tabi'un who reported certain hadiths which had been conveyed to them from others and they said, 'We are not ignorant of this, but the 'amal is other than it.'" So here Imam Malik, radiya'llahu 'anhu, is making a statement of enormous importance which cannot be dismissed by someone today; it cannot be ignored because it is Imam Malik who said it, and we will speak more about Imam Malik himself and his importance, but for the minute we will stay intellectually with the concept that we are not interested in being a school. We are talking about identifying how the Sunna is recognised, passed on, kept alive in the first recorded phase of the process, after the earliest stage of the Rasulallah, salla'llahu 'alayhi wa salim, and the Khulafa' ar-Rashidun. Ibn al-Mu'adhdhal said, "I heard a man ask Ibn al-Majishun, - who was a student of Imam Malik -'Why did you relate the hadith and then leave it?' "He said, 'It is so that it will be known that we left it with knowledge.'" It is that we left the hadith with knowledge of its existence. This refers to the fact that an action was being followed which had more weight than the text. Now, on this simple statement hangs the destiny of foundational knowledge of Islam and how it was perceived by a series of communities through the first stages of time after the Tabi'in and the Tabi'in of the Tabi'in. The transformation of this consciousness is so radical and so deep that we find a highly developed stage of Islamic society later utterly unable to grasp this concept and unable to conceive the underlying thesis from which it is made; and also the political necessity to redefine that position from being Kitab wa Sunna, to being in fact the specific, idiosyncratic, private version of how things are, of a school based on a man along with other schools based on other men, each having contradictory and conflicting elements and versions of one reality, so that the people later logically say, "Why are there these differences when there is one Sunna, there cannot be four, and therefore we will prefer the Sunna to these," the implication being, "These people do not embody the Sunna and the Sunna itself is the hadith." But the hadith is the text and the Sunna is the behaviour.

Let us pull back again from this: I have to reiterate because it is so simple, and at the same time it has managed to cause a complete transformation in the consciousness of the Muslims over a period of time. Rabi'a said, "I prefer a thousand taking from a thousand over one taking from one, because one from one can strip of the Sunna out of your hands." So here again in the earliest stage, there is a political, an existential concept, that seems to have in it some deep underlying sanity which is that a thousand people can be relied upon to protect one action, but that one person relating from another person will make the thing vanish. This perception, in time, will be turned round so that a thousand taking from a thousand will be put forward as utterly unreliable, whereas the written text, from one passed to one, will be considered verification. What one has to ask is whether it is in fact a primitive methodology being supplanted by a sophisticated methodology, or whether it is a political psychology altering its focus from one kind of man, with one kind of integrity, confirmed civically, giving way to a scholar who has a piece of paper which he passed on in a ritualised, systematised manner to another person, and that becomes a validation of everything. In other words, we have moved from politically free man, now mistrusted, to the private bureaucrat who does not trust but insists on total acceptance. But we are anticipating... Ibn Abi Uways said: "I heard Malik say, 'This knowledge is the deen, so look to the one from whom you take it. I have met seventy people who said, "The Messenger of Allah, sallallahu 'alayhi wa salim, said ... " within those pillars - and he pointed to the pillars inside the mosque of Madinah - and I did not take anything from them. Had one of them been entrusted with a treasury, he would have been trustworthy. But they were not the people of this business.'" Yahya ibn 'Abdullah said to Abu Zur'a: "This is not zaza'a from zawba'a; this is not turbulence taking it from the whirlwind; you remove the veil and you look at the Messenger, sallallahu 'alayhi wa salim, with his Companions in his presence: Malik from Nafi' from Ibn 'Umar." He said:

"This is not,"(-and he makes names which deliberately make a mockery of the concept of Islam.) "This is not zaza'a from zawba'a; this is not turbulence taking from the whirlwind." (He said, that what this is is that) - you remove the veil and you are looking directly at the Rasulallah, sallallahu 'alayhi wa salim, with the Sahaba, in his presence." And what is that? It is from Malik who heard it from Nafi' who had it from Ibn 'Umar, a hadith, directly. So we are talking about an intimacy of place, an intimacy of time, and a nobility of person that means qualitatively that the heart of the matter is utterly incontrovertible, confirmed and without any doubt whatsoever. Now, this quality, that has been mentioned by Yahya ibn 'Abdullah in his conversation with Abu Zur'a, and this very high spiritual criterion which has been set by Malik, are on a different level from what we will later find is the very underlying principle which confirms Islam in the later methodology. The confirming factor of the isnad would become that the man could be entrusted with a treasury; but the confirming factor of Malik is that while he could be entrusted with a treasury, that is not the point; he would also know what it meant to transmit the hadith, to pass it from one to another. There was a consciousness of process, but this consciousness of process was to be existential, direct and verifiable from man to man, neither with an intermediary textual process nor any intermediary textual apparatus. Now, Abu Dawud said: "The soundest transmission of hadith from the Messenger of Allah, salla'llahu 'alayhi wa salim, is from Malik from Nafi' from Ibn 'Umar. Then Malik from azZuhri from Salim from his father. Then Malik from Abu'z-Zinad from al-A'raj from Abu Hurayra." The point being that in these three or four steps you are right in the Madina of the Messenger, sallallahu 'alayhi wa salim, with the Sahaba. It's what the earliest speaker said, "It is as if the veil were lifted and you were there." This has to be borne in mind because we are coming to something so different. You are going to see this primal comprehension swept aside to be replaced with something of a very different nature. Malik said:

"'Umar ibn al-Khattab was tested with these things and he did not answer them." Ibn az-Zubayr said, "I do not know." Ibn 'Umar said, "I do not know." Here again Malik, who was famous for saying, "I do not know" in questions of fiqh, was not doing this out of some idiosyncrasy, he was doing it out of an understanding of precisely what he wanted to preserve. And what he wanted to preserve was the minimal, inescapable, necessary, obligatory process by which legal judgements would be passed, that would involve punishments, withholdings and grantings. So, his "I do not know" indicated a judgement in law, that to throw out the case was in itself a libertarian concept. He could have taken another way of dealing with the matter which came to him as a faqih. In his fiqh he could have said, "I have not got a basis, but I will make a decision." But he looked and saw nothing in the essential matter of what had to be preserved in the Qur'an, the Sunna, and what came before him, and rather than interposing his personal viewpoint, he would throw it out of court and say, "I do not know." So that non-judgement, not reaching a judgement, was an absolute pillar of his social justice and his political method. Now, the implications of this are that when Malik, in al-Muwatta', says that he does think something, then the weight of that has to be taken into account with enormous gravity because his not knowing is in itself a Sunna derived from 'Umar ibn alKhattab. We are now gauging the quality and the flavour and the identity of one methodology before we come to look at another. Ibn Mahdi said: "When you see that the Hijazi loves Malik ibn Anas, know that he is one with the Sunna. When you see someone carping at him, know that he is the opposite." So if someone finds fault with Malik ibn Anas, he is someone who is opposing the Sunna. So when we hear today, in this place, that someone who presents himself as an Islamic leader criticises Malik ibn Anas, then Ibn Mahdi, this noble man from the Salaf, says, "When you find such a person, know that he is opposing the Sunna." So it seems that this way is either confirmed or it is rejected. And to reject it, is to reject the Sunna. Let us go further. Ma'n said: "Malik went to the mosque one day and he was leaning on my hand. A man called Abu Turayda, who was suspected of being misguided, met him and said to Malik, 'Abu 'Abdullah! Listen to something from me. I want to speak to you about it and argue with you and tell you what my opinion is.' "Malik said to him, 'Be careful I do not testify against you.'

"He said, 'By Allah, I only want the truth. Listen: if it is correct, say yes or speak.' "And Malik said, 'If you defeat me?' "He said, 'Then you follow me.' "Malik said, 'And if I defeat you?' "He said, 'Then I will follow you.' "Malik said, 'And if a man comes and speaks to us and defeats both of us?' "He said, 'We will follow him.' "Malik said, 'Abu Turayda, Allah sent Muhammad, sallallahu 'alayhi wa salim, with the deen and I see you moving. I see you shifting.' 'Umar ibn 'Abdu'l-'Aziz said, "Whoever makes his deen a target for conflict has moved away from it." There is no argument about anything in the deen. Hypocrisy and argument in knowledge remove the light of iman from the heart of the slave.'" And is that, Abu Turayda's position, not the position of the modernists? Now look at this other aspect: Abu Talib al-Makki said: "Malik was the furthest of people from the school of the mutakallimun, and the strongest of them in hatred for the Iraqis, and the firmest of them in the Sunna of the Salaf among the Companions and the Tabi'un." Now, here three things have been mentioned: That he was the furthest from the schools of mutakallimun, and this relates to the last, of course, that he was the nearest to the Sunna of the Salaf among the Companions and the Tabi'un; that is, by his correct, dynastic relationship with the Qur'an, and by the impeccable path that he had taken out of the Sunna of salla'llahu 'alayhi wa salim, in its absolute certainty, which the previous story demonstrates; and that involved also what is referred to here as hatred for the Iraqis. Now, it is very well-known that Iraq was a place from which controversy and trouble came because, of course, part of the first fitna took place and was based precisely in Iraq. Also all the concepts and new ideas, and all the invasion of ideas from the East and from Iran came into Iraq to make all the trouble, uncertainty and intellectual insecurity in the new Muslim community. Malik's freedom from all this was based on this correct relationship that he had to the Sunna. Now, again, to clarify, we are not talking about the leader of a madhhab.

We are talking about the most important Imam of the Muslims, as the guardian of the Sunna, living in its place, al-Madina al-Munawwara. Malik's book, al-Muwatta', is the corner-stone of this knowledge and there is a story that the khalif said to Malik: "Let me take your Muwatta' and put it in the Ka'ba, or on top of the Ka'ba, and let me declare that that is to be the book that governs all the Muslims,"- and according to this story, Imam Malik said - "No, because there were different people in different places, and different riwayats, and it would not be correct to make one dominate all the others," or words to that effect. Now, various things have been said about this story. One is that it is true and he did not want to impose this on all the people. But a deeper thing has been said; and that is that Imam Malik could never, since he had the truth or the Sunna, as it has been expressed here, compromise it with anything other than it, because he has indicated that there is no room, in the matter of the Sunna, to debate or for discussion. In alMuwatta' it is absolutely clear that the foundational evidence is non-negotiable, and then where he gives his views, it is clearly stated as his statement and his view, separate from what is the Sunna. Nevertheless, his statement and his view has to be given that high place due to him as the Imam who has founded everything that he says on this knowledge. Therefore, it is unthinkable that he would deny the very foundation that he had spent a lifetime establishing in the creation of the Muwatta'. Deeper even than this is that statement of Shaykh Nayfar who said: "Look, if Imam Malik had said to the Khalif, 'You may make this book the statutory book of law for all of the Muslims,' it would have become the ideological book of the regime. It would have been in the hands of other fuqaha' outside of the influence of Imam Malik, to take the book, to play with it, and from it derive whatever judgements the regime wanted at the expense of the veracity of the basic material. In other words, if this book was the book, then they could say, when they did something that people opposed. 'But this is the regime of Imam Malik's Muwatta'.' He would have given his authority, his legal authority to the regime, but he considered that what was in the Muwatta' was in itself an active critical judgement of any regime that presented itself historically." This is the point of view of Shaykh ash-Shadhili an-Nayfar, who is the master of knowledge of the 'amal of the Ahl al-Madinah in our time. A man asked Malik:

"Who are the people of the Sunna, Abu 'Abdullah?" (All of this, remember, is defining the primal Islamic position in its first stage of identifying itself, following the rule of the Khulafa' ar-Rashidun) "Who are the people of the Sunna, Abu 'Abdullah?" And he replied, "Those who do not have a title by which they are known. Not a Jahmi, not a Rafidi, not a Qadiri." And we will say, by obvious logical extension, not a Maliki, not a Hanbali, not a Shafi'i, not a Hadithi ... not a Jami'at al-Islamiyya, or Ikhwan al-Muslimeen, not anyone who held any name that identified himself, separating himself from the Muslims, because we also know that Malik, radiya'llahu 'anhu, said, "Anyone who calls himself by any name other than a Muslim, has made a bid'a on the deen. " (here he has categorically defined it. He went further and also said) "All the people of sects are kuffar. " The implication of this is that the Islamic body, the jama'a of the Muslims, the community of the Muslims, have only one path, and that it is a civic pattern under an Amir governed by the Shari'a. And we will see that that has conditions, without which that statement itself would not be true, because Amirate is not simply a matter of giving someone a title. It is a commitment to this primal position that is Islam in its full definition. Malik said: "Knowledge is not by a lot of riwayat. Knowledge is a light which Allah places in them." By saying this, Malik blocks the road to the creation of an elite who took their authority and their position as an elite from their superior educated methodology of access to hadith by riwayat rather than a totally integrated human being in whose heart Allah had put a light. Malik also said: "The adab of Allah is the Qur'an" (courtesy, the transaction of the manners of Allah, is the Qur'an ) "The adab of the Messenger, sallallahu 'alayhi wa salim, is the Sunna. The adab of the Salihun is the Fiqh." And here Malik, in that quintessential way, proving that the great statements of Islam can be made very simply, has indicated the basic triad on which Islam must be built. The adab of Allah is the Qur'an. The adab of the Messenger, salla'llahu 'alayhi wa salim, is the Sunna. The adab of the Salihun is the fiqh.

So you will go from knowledge of the Qur'an to knowledge of the Sunna and directly to fiqh, directly to the functioning justice system. And the functioning justice system can only take place by the primal creation of an Amir who upholds that law and gives due place to the fuqaha'. The second term of the triad is the Sunna. And we must understand this is the crucial dimension which has to be recovered and saved if we are not to lose the very thing that Malik is indicating. Because what Malik means by Sunna is behaviour - and we can now go to the Arabic language and remember that Sunna is synonymous with 'amal: Sunna is action, and 'amal is behaviour. Hadith is synonymous with athar, text, traces, documents. It is not synonymous with action in the language of man. Ibn Mahdi said: "There is no book after the Book of Allah, which is more beneficial for people, than the Muwatta'." Imam ash-Shafi'i said: "There is no book of knowledge on the earth more correct than the book of Malik." Now, any book coming after it, any collection of hadith coming after this, would not displace Malik's book from its primacy after the Qur'an al-Karim, because its prior position and its author and its place and its evidences place it above anything that would come, historically, after it. It cannot be displaced by anything coming after it and nothing can be more correct than it, when anything coming after it is dependent on it for isnad. Sa'd al-Qurashi said: "His hadith "- (Imam Malik's, clearly stated) -"there is not one who rejects them in the entire universe." Now the asanid of the hadith of Malik were written, so even by the methodology that involved correcting hadith, the asanid and the hadith of Malik were written by Qadis - by Qadi Isma'il, Abu'l-Qasim al-Jawhari, Qasim ibn Asbah, Abu'l-Hasan alQabisi, Abu Dharr al-Harawi, Abu Bakr al-Qubab, Abu'l-Hasan 'Ali ibn Khalaf, asSijilmasi, al-Matriz, Abu 'Abdullah al-Jizi, Ahmad ibn Fahzad al-Farisi, Qadi Abu Mufarrij, Ibn al-A'rabi, Muhammad ibn Shurush as-Sa'ani, 'Abdu'r-Rahman anNasa'i, Abu Muhammad ibn 'Adi al-Jurjani, Ahmad ibn Ibrahim Jami' as-Sakawi, Ibn 'Ufayr, Abu 'Abdullah as-Sirraj an-Nisapuri, Abu'l-'Arab at-Tamimi, Abu Bakr ibn Ziyad an-Nisapuri, Abu Hafs ibn Shahin, 'Abdu'l-'Aziz ibn Salama, Abu'l-

Qasim al-Andalusi, Abu 'Umar ibn 'Abdu'l-Barr, Qadi Ibn Mufarrij, and Muhammad ibn 'Ishun at-Tutaytili. Ibn Habib and Muslim have a work on the subject of Malik's shuyukh. This is just to show that even within the later tradition, an enormous research was done on the asanid of the hadith of Imam Malik. Let us go further into the theme that we have been following. That was in reference to the Muwatta'. Now let us go back to Imam Malik. One of the governors of Madinah said to Malik: "Why do you not dye as your companions dye?" - (Why do you not henna the beard?) Malik replied, "Is that all you have left of justice, that I dye my beard?" This is not an ordinary story of noble character. It is that if you take the Sunna - the living from the living - you will automatically know what is important and what is not important. If you take the Sunna from texts, every text that is authenticated has the same weight because it is the Sunna and it is on paper. So, the fact that you will give justice to a widow in her legal claim, or to the poor man, and to assess whether the man has stolen and should be cut, or whether he has stolen and should be forgiven, takes the same weight on paper as whether the beard is dyed. Imam Malik is not simply demonstrating nobility of character, he is rejecting a point of view about knowledge of the Sunna of Rasulallah, salla'llahu 'alayhi wa salim; he insists that you must follow the way of the fiqh and not the way of the report by which the Sunna of the behaviour is given the same status as the Sunna of justice. It is by this that we have today the people who are immaculately groomed, according to the Sunna, in their dress, in how they sit, in how they greet, in how they speak to each other, and who are not paying zakat, which is a fard of the deen, and the zakat cannot be collected without an Amir who appoints a zakat collector. According to the obligation, a zakat collector must have it in his character to collect the zakat and for this he must be appointed. Because if the man does not pay the zakat then the process has to be completed according to the Shari'a. This is the politics of Malik fighting in Madinah for what has been totally lost and totally abandoned in this century. Ma'n said: "Ibrahim ibn Yahya al-'Abbasi, the amir of Madina, came to Malik on a camel while Malik was young. Malik remained in his seat and did not make room for the Amir of Madina. Ibrahim sat on the small part of the rug left by Malik. Malik did not

move while Ibrahim spoke for an hour. And then he said to him, 'What do you say, Abu 'Abdullah, about the one in ihram who kills a louse?' "Malik said, 'He does not kill it.' "Ibrahim said, 'He killed it. What is its fidya?' " Malik said, 'He does not do it.' "He said, 'He did it!' "Malik said, 'He does not do it.' "The Amir said, 'I tell you that he did it and you say, "He does not do it"!' "Malik replied, 'Yes'." Ibrahim got up in a fury. Malik remained silent for an hour and then turned to his students and said, "They want to play with the deen. The fidya is for the one who kills it unintentionally." So here is the pattern. And here is what can only be recovered by taking this position. 'Abdu'l-Malik ibn al-Majishun said: "A man of the people of Iraq asked Malik about the sadaqa of the habous, and he said, 'When there is full and exclusive possession, it is carried out.' "The Iraqi said, 'Shurayh says that there is no habous in the Book of Allah.' "Malik laughed - and he did not laugh often - and then he said, 'May Allah have mercy on Shurayh! He does not know what the Companions of Rasulallah, sallallahu 'alayhi wa salim, did here in Madinah.'" This is the value structure of primal Islam in the hands of men of knowledge and it was to be replaced by something totally different in nature and identity which went along with a politique and society of a totally different nature. Abu Mus'ab said: "Abu Yusuf said to Malik, 'Do you give the adhan with tarji' - (that is, repeating the shahada in a loud voice after saying in a low voice) - when you do not have anything from a hadith on it?'"

So here the matter is open in the time of Imam Malik. It is not something that emerged later. And Malik turned to him and said: "Subhanallah! - Glory be to Allah! I have never seen anything more extraordinary than this! It is called out in front of witnesses five times every day. And the sons have inherited it from their fathers from the Messenger of Allah, sallallahu 'alayhi wa salim, until this very day, and he needs so-and-so from so-and-so in it! This is much more sound in our view than the hadith." Ibn Qayyim said: "The walls, the places and the areas have no effect in the preference of statements." - (and by saying that he rejected all, everything). - "The walls, the places and the areas have no effect in the preference of statements." Qadi 'Iyad gave his famous answer which completely obliterates this superficial observation: "Madinah is not esteemed for its houses or for its streets, but for the presence of the Messenger of Allah, sallallahu 'alayhi wa salim, in it and his Companions." Abu Hurayra, radiya'llahu 'anhu, from the Messenger of Allah, sallallahu 'alayhi wa salim, said: "There are angels on the roads of Madina." And 'A'isha, radiya'llahu 'anha, relates that sallallahu 'alayhi wa salim, said: "The cities were opened up with the swords," (-and in brackets we should mention that this is now denied by the modernists who have adopted another methodology-) "The cities were opened up with the swords and Madinah was opened with the Qur'an." Again the implication of this is that in Madinah you have the city opened by the Qur'an, because the Qur'an was sent down in it and therefore the co-habitation and nearness and intimacy and harmony between the Qur'anic revelations and their meanings and their legal judgments and the Sunna of Rasulallah, salla'llahu 'alayhi wa salim, and the legal judgements of the Khulafa' ar-Rashidun that followed in Madinah, were in the closest intimate harmony in a world that did not exist anywhere else.

Ibn 'Umar said: "When a sedition occurs, if people would only refer the business to the people of Madinah, and if they agree on something," (- that is, they do it -) "then the business would be put right. But when a dog barks, the people follow." Now let us look at the record with quite simple, pragmatic, human understanding, and let us apply it within our own context of understanding the human situation because Malik looked at the proximity and the intimacy and the nearness of this affair. Malik ibn Anas ibn Malik ibn Abi 'Amir al-Asbahi. His great grandfather, Abu 'Amir al-Asbahi, was a Companion of Rasulallah, salla'llahu 'alayhi wa salim. His grandfather Malik was one of the great Tabi'un. He died in 112 hijra, and related from 'Umar, Talha, 'A'isha, Abu Hurayra and Hassan ibn Thabit, and he participated in the burial of Sayyiduna 'Uthman, the third of the Khulafa' arRashidun, radiya'llahu 'anhu. Everybody, almost everybody, remembers and has a very distinct experience of his own grandfather. And that grandfather in turn talked of his father, and that is a shared experience in every family, where there is survival, to such an extent that I can transmit the ordinary hadith and the sunna of my grandfather, and I know stories that were told about his parents. This is common, especially where there is continuity between generations in a place. If there is movement from a place to a place, some of this gets lost, but where there is continuity in a place, this passing on is known. It is known to the human being, it cannot be denied. When it is in a town of the size of al-Madinah al-Munawwara, which is like a small, medium-sized town of today, if you have generations, if you have the father, the grandfather, the greatgrandfather there, you have a clear record. You have a civic confirmation. As the matter is in fact the total opening of the final revelation of the final revelation of the last religion that Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, has given to mankind, and everybody in Madinah knows that what is common there is not only for them, but for the whole world, that what salla'llahu 'alayhi wa salim said and did had co-existent importance with the revelation of the Qur'an as part of this new religion, and that the transmission of actions and knowledges are part of the living process, and error in it is most grievous, is not this the most vivid, absolutely clear means by which we have in front of us the total process in its best form? So that if we have that record, nothing that comes after it is going to have this flavour, because what we find is that not only do we know what the Sunna is and have statements as well as actions of Rasulallah, salla'llahu 'alayhi wa salim, and of the Sahaba, and the Tabi'un and the Tabi'i't-Tabi'in, but also that we have the qualitative taste of active political awareness, as opposed to a people who consider that primal participation to be in the hands of an elite whose expertise is a

document in paper and ink. So that we go from a people who are counted, when they come to a place, by the swords they leave in the courtyard, to a people counted by the pens that they leave in the mosque courtyard when they record the hadith of the muhaddithun. When Imam Muslim arrived in the city, it is described that so many thousands of inkpots were there. But when these other people gathered at a gathering it was recorded in the literature of the time that so many thousands of swords were in the courtyard. This is the qualitative political difference that we find. Imam Malik was born in 93 hijra in Madinah and died in 179 hijra. He married Fatima, and his sons were Yahya, Muhammad, and Hammad. When Malik lived in Madinah, all the knowledge of the epoch was there. Malik related from 900 or more shuyukh. He wrote down 100,000 hadiths with his own hand. Included among those from whom he related, were 900 Tabi'in and Tabi'i't-Tabi'in like his father. And he learnt from the whole city of Madinah. Some of the shaykhs who taught Malik in turn related from him; you see, as his status manifested itself, they in turn would take from him because of the high quality that he very quickly manifested as a young man in his work in Madina. The teachers of Malik from Madina are: Muhammad ibn Muslim ibn 'Ubaydullah ibn Shihab az-Zuhri, he was a Tabi'i; Abu'l-Aswad, Tabi'i; Ayyub ibn Abi Tamima as-Sakhtiyani, Tabi'i; Rabi'a ibn Abi 'Abdu'r-Rahman, Tabi'i; Musa ibn 'Uqba, Tabi' ; Abu Muhammad al-Hasan ibn Isma'il ad-Darrab, Tabi'i; Hisham ibn 'Urwa, Tabi'i; Zayd ibn Aslam, Tabi'i; Yazid ibn 'Abdullah ibn Qusayt al-Laythi, Tabi'i; 'Amr ibn al-Harith al-Misri, Tabi't-Tabi'in; Zayd ibn Abi Unaysa al-Jazari, Tabi't-Tabi'in; Nafi' ibn al-Qari' ibn Abi Nu'aym, Tabi't-Tabi'in; Muhammad ibn 'Ajlan, Tabi'tTabi'in ; Yazid ibn 'Ubaydullah ibn Usama ibn al-Hadi, Tabi't-Tabi'in; 'Abdu'lMalik ibn Jurayh, Tabi't-Tabi'in; Muhammad ibn Ishaq, the companion of alMaghazi, Tabu't-Tabi'in; Muhammad ibn Ishaq al-Madani, Tabi't-Tabi'in; Sulayman ibn Mahran al-A'mash, Tabi't-Tabi'in. All the shaykhs of Malik were from Madina except for six: Abu'z-Zubayr from Makka, Tabi'i ; Hamid at-Tawil from Basra, Tabi'i; Ayyub as-Sakhtiyani from Basra, Tabi'i; 'Ata' ibn Abi Muslim from Khorasan, Tabi'i; 'Abdu'l-Karim al-Jazari from Jazira, Tabi'i; Ibrahim ibn Abala from Syria, Tabi'i. And so also we should bear in mind that this meant that while Malik took from Madinah he was perfectly aware of what there was to know taken from Makka, from Basra, from Syria. From Imam Malik, and now we are talking about Imam Malik as the Imam of the Muslims, as the Imam of the Muslim Community, as the Imam of the Umma in its spiritual and political capital of Madinah, his scholars went out over the Muslim world. They spread.

Now we look at just the most important of this enormous range of people, of great scholars who came from Malik. We are now seeing that this knowledge spread out. It is not something that is in a little corner. We are not talking about madhhabs, we are talking about Islam, Book and Sunna. This primal knowledge which we have been examining in this time now goes out from Madinah. Inside Madinah are: alMughira ibn 'Abdu'r-Rahman al-Makhzumi, first generation; Nafi' ibn 'Abdu'rRahman ibn Nu'aym Hurmuz, the Qari' who is the Imam Nafi' of the riwayat Warsh of the Qur'an; 'Abdu'l-Malik ibn 'Abdu'l-'Aziz ibn 'Abdullah ibn Abi Salma, who is a second generation student; Musa ibn 'Abdullah ibn Mus'ab ibn Thabit ibn 'Abdullah, second generation; Harun ibn 'Abdullah az-Zuhri, third generation in Madinah. Thus, three generations in Madinah. In Yemen, Yahya ibn Thabit, first generation. In the Hijaz, Muhammad ibn Idris ash-Shafi'i, second generation. In Iraq and the East, 'Abdullah ibn al-Mubarak, first generation; 'Abdullah ibn al-Mu'adhdhal, first generation; 'Abdullah ibn Maslama ibn Qa'nab at-Tamimi, second generation; 'Abdu'r-Rahman ibn Mahdi ibn Hassan al-'Anbari, second generation; Muhammad ibn 'Umar ibn Waqid al-Waqidi, second generation. Remember he was teaching over this long period of time through four generations. In Syria, Abu Mushir 'Abdu'l-A'la ibn Mushir al-Ghassani, second generation. In Egypt, 'Ali ibn Ziyad al-Iskandari, first generation. Asbagh ibn al-Faraj ibn Sa'id ibn Nafi', first generation. Abu 'Amr Al-Harith ibn Miskin, first generation. And the important 'Abdullah ibn Wahb ibn Muslim al-Qurayshi who was quoted very much, second generation. Abu 'Amr Ash-hab, second generation. Al-Mutaddal ibn Fadala, second generation. In North Africa, and this is very important because the teaching went west. What you have to understand is that the main body of Islam, the Islam that we have been talking about, did not go east to Nishapur, it did not go north to Iraq. It went west. Islam went to Africa. This is the historical fact that was obliterated by the powerstructure which followed. In North Africa, 'Abdullah ibn Ghanim, the Qadi, first generation. 'Ali ibn Ziyad atTunisi al-Absi, first generation. Remember all these people are people Qadi 'Iyad gave very special preference to because of their noble qualities. People known, historically important and miskin , and among the great teachers of this primal Islam. Al-Bahlul ibn Rashid, first generation; Abu Muhammad 'Abdullah ibn Farukh alFarisi, first generation; 'Abdu'r-Rahman ibn al-Qasim al-'Atqi, first generation; Abu Sa'id Sahnun ibn Sa'id ibn Habib at-Tanukhi, first generation; Muhammad ibn Sahnun, second generation; Ahmad ibn Mu'attib ibn Abi'l-Azhar, third generation.

Remember, all this knowledge of Islam is what came to Andalusia. Remember also that before the Murabitun were: Ziyad ibn 'Abdu'r-Rahman, first generation. 'Abdu'l-Malik ibn Habib, first generation. Yahya ibn Ma'mar ibn 'Imran ibn Matays ibn 'Ubayd, first generation. Muhammad ibn Bashir al-Qadi, second generation. Yahya ibn Yahya al-Laythi, third generation. And from al-Laythi comes the most famous riwayat of alMuwatta' , which is the one everyone follows by preference. Muhammad ibn Waddah ibn Bazi', third generation. So this is the picture of this primal Islam which we see going from Madina and spreading in all directions, because the teachers from Malik went to the north, they went into Iran. Iran was Maliki, and when I say Maliki I mean following Imam Malik. Please recognise this distinction. And this teaching essentially went to Africa, went to Egypt, and from Egypt it moved, most importantly, to Qayrawan. And Qayrawan became the citadel of this knowledge. It moved to Morocco and of course, it later went with Ibn Tashfin into Andalusia again. From its first experience it was revitalised and made dynamic again with the coming of the Murabitun. But by this time something else had happened. And that something else, insha'llah, we will look at next. How this became submerged and something else took its place. In none of this must anyone say that I am rejecting the hadith. What is at issue here is not the confirmation of the hadith or rejection of the hadith . In all of this we are exploring these matters as people of Ahl as-Sunna wa'l-Jama'a, that we basically accept the Schools, we all accept the hadith literature because we accept the position that the Muslims are in today. What we are now doing is looking at methodology in order, first of all, to find that path which will give us the most pure and correct following of the Book of Allah and the Sunna of Rasulullah, sallallahu 'alayhi wa salim. No one can say that that in itself is anything but good. Secondly and most importantly, by doing that, we are looking for that trigger mechanism that will turn Islam into natural Islamic activism as opposed to the passive lip service that is now paid to very vital concepts so that they are never embodied in the political sphere and are never embodied in the teaching process and are never embodied in the creation of a just society which is what Islam was created for. In all of this we have to remember that these developments brought with them benefits and also, as is the way with things in growth, brought with them difficulties. Islam has always cyclically gone back to its sources to rejuvenate itself and revitalise itself to revive the deen , so that the role of reviving the deen is imposed on the Muslim when he finds his deen in need of revival. And the only way is to go back. So all we are doing is that thing which will strenghten our deen . It is not to call anyone kafir or non-Muslim, but to find what will save them from the kufr that will follow if we do not take on Islam to the limits of our understanding, let alone of our capacity.

So next let us look at the later methodology that overthrew this and redefined it and changed its character and changed its identity until it was almost invisible, so that now it is considered criminal or something making division among the Muslims. And the result of this very clinical examination will in fact produce the most volatile and dynamic end result , it will produce conclusions which are of a nature politically nothing other than the means to the re-creation of political Islam.

Summary
Part One: Text
We have defined what was the primal Islam deriving from Sayyiduna Muhammad, salla'llahu 'alayhi wa salim, and his Sahaba and the Tabi'in and the Tabi'it-Tabi'in , through the time of the Khulafa' ar-Rashidun and after it, through the time of Ibn 'Umar, through the time of Nafi', established and spread out from Madinah. Remember, we are not talking about madhhabs, we are not interested in them, we are talking about Imam Malik in his role as Imam of the Muslims and as the Imam of the Dar al-Hijra, which is the unassailed position that he had which, of course, places him over all the other Imams of madhhabs who came after him, in other places, while he was the Imam of Dar al-Hijra, the Imam of the Place of the Deen . After Malik we also indicated that there was a stream, a river with many tributaries, of this teaching that went out to the East and the West. We are saying that in fact this primal Islamic teaching went to Africa right at the beginning. It moved from Madinah and the great teachers of the deen of Islam and went to Egypt. And from Egypt they spread over to Qayrawan and into the Maghrib as we know. Then, after Malik, began the ossification, complexification, structuralization of the method by which hadith were collected, by which hadith were narrated, by which hadith were transmitted. Another point of view took over, and we must recognise the difference, although some of the language is the same, because what is at issue is still the transmission of a hadith and, as we are all aware, hadiths were being transmitted at the time of the Sahaba . We know that Sayyiduna 'Umar would send for someone to get a hadith from them if he did not have what he wanted for a particular judgement. We know also from al-Muwatta' of this very dynamic relationship in Madinah between Amir al-Mu'minin 'Umar and Umm al-Mu'minin 'A'isha, radiya'llahu 'anha, in the giving of hadith and in the establishing of the Sunna . But we want to look again at this way in which the terminology became politically altered or rather the consciousness of the event became altered, therefore the language became altered. There is a linguistic shift. There is a rare shift, that you can measure, in the way people think. The politics of the dominant caste of the muhaddithun emerge. I will now quote showing how people began to think. This is a modern person giving this viewpoint. He said,

"The excellent Salaf were very angry with the one who opposed the hadith by the statement of a person, whoever that was. None of the Imams of Islam is known to have said, 'We do not act by the hadith until we know who acted by it.'" Do you follow what he is saying? He is saying that none of the Imams said, "We do not act by the hadith until we know who acted by it." In other words, he is already making a series of value judgements in this that is actually changing the whole way we understand the procedure of Islam. "The excellent Salaf were very angry with the one who opposed the hadith by the statement of a person, whoever that was. None of the Imams of Islam is known to have said, 'We do not act by the hadith until we know who acted by it.'" What I am saying is that here the dialectic has been reversed to hoodwink you by a double trick. Sunna is equated with the hadith, with the collection's methodology. And the muhaddithun are equated with the original Salaf as if they too followed the methodology and not just a specific hadith . The political reality is that the Salaf followed a witnessed reality. Here is the logical bind into which the school of hadith have put themselves. They said, and this is now the muhaddithun speaking,: "The proof is the Sunna. It is not abandoned for the action of some Muslim which is contrary to it. The Sunna is the gauge of action; the action is not the gauge of the Sunna ." Now let us, in the language of linguistics, let us "read" this argument. They mean (now first I will give you the literary statements): "The proof is the Sunna. It is not abandoned for the action of some Muslim which is contrary to it. The Sunna is the gauge of action; the action is not the gauge of the Sunna ." Let us read this: What they mean is the hadith is the gauge of the Sunna. And then let us read that: It means the textual record of a sunna, after submission to the methodology of the hadith system and having found by its criteria acceptance, stood to be the signifier of the original action and thus the gauge of current action. And this reads out that the hadith system's approved text designated a signifier of a previous sunna. This means that finally accepted text, approved by a man using the complex methodology around 250 years hijra, gives quasi-authortiy to the fact of an event that took place almost certainly in Madinah 240 years previously, while the action itself is not the gauge of the Sunna. Which must read therefore: the communal practice of Madinah's 10,000 citizens who had an ongoing civic experience and memory and report and record,

confirmed by imitation in action, mutually adjusted by communal criticism and individual knowledge around 110 years hijra is not the gauge of the Sunna that most probably took place in Madinah around the year 10 hijra, for example, a gap of only 100 years. The methodology has to be examined more closely while the purpose must be understood. An examination of the methodology is not and cannot be taken to be a rejection or a verification of hadith as such. This is not my purpose. The isnad system of classification divides hadith into around 50 categories. The system is mutatis-mutandis a textual system. Now, before the establishment of "the Sacred Six", the full methodology and the existential political relationship of man to text is different from the full orthodox method following the establishment of "the Sacred Six." The primal system is that of basic sanity and also trust, as we have seen in the previous examinations. That is, an original Prophetic sunna is copied in action, and by report civically, in a city, specifically renamed from Yathrib to Madina, the place or locus of the deen , the name being changed to indicate its specific purpose in the new religion. Then from the primal system we move to the hadith system in its initial, simple form. From this then another stage is reached. We had to find that the primal system existed and we have indicated that it did not die and that it went to Africa. It went from Madinah to Africa and was alive and well in Africa while Iraq fell into a nightmare of arguments of kalam and mutakallimun and the north fell into the arguments of the sects and the conflict between the Shi'a and the Muslims. In the centre of things and in Baghdad the hadith system, in its initial simple form, begins to emerge. And we would define it as having five elements in its methodology: 1. Sama' , that is the teacher to the student. Sama'a means to listen. 2. 'Ard , reading our texts. Simply reading out the texts to the students. 3. Munawala , passing on the text by hand. 4. Kitaba , by letter. 5. Wajada , passing on a text without an ijaza or license. That is its primitive form. The methodology in itself, from the point of view of linguistics, has many features which we find to be active. In every case transmission implies the active participation of both parties, except for No. 5, wajada , where one party has dropped out of the transaction and become, as it were, merely the author. In other words, "here is my text." In the later system, the complexity set up an internal bureaucracy until the methodology was completed. In

other words, the creation of the system gave scholars an active role. The minute they had built the system nobody after that had an active role in the process because it was already defined and because it would have no new material, it would become 'authority.' The internal bureaucracy would have a role, an active role, until the methodology is completed. Then the only active function you could have is to use the system, have an abstract relationship with it. No dynamic relationship is permitted and only a passive, almost neurotic, one is possible because it is so intricate, so morbidly complex that your attitude becomes passive to the point that you may not even want or feel equippped or have the courage to enter into it. It should be mentioned that in the early stage of the hadith system, hadith began to be transmitted from a teacher to students of the age of seven. Abu'r-Rabi' transmitted 'Abdu'r-Razzaq's book, and when 'Abdu'r-Razzaq died, his student was seven years old. This can be found in the Kitab ar-Rawi . Also if a child could discriminate between a cow and a donkey he was considered capable of transmitting hadith. That was the raw material that they were accepting. So the building of the edifice of the final methodology remains the last active function possible for a Muslim intellectual, that is, we are then presented with the total system as orthodoxy. It was to mean that the completion of this magnificent baroque edifice with its enormous intricate interior, which we will look at shortly, in its nature was going to become an absolute thing and it therefore had to set itself the imperial task, intellectually speaking, of annexing or colonising the fiqh material, subsuming the fiqh under the hadith system. By extension, in some way also trying to subsume Qur'anic studies, inasmuch as crucial aspects of Qur'anic knowledge would nevertheless be contained in hadith which referred to nasikh and mansukh , nuzul where the ayat was sent down - and what specific Sahaba or what sallallahu 'alayhi wa salim said about a particular ayat . So in fact, in its nature it set itself a no-limits control system of Islamic affairs. The science called Dirasat hadith , investigation of isnad , contents, subject, and mode of transmission, begins to reveal the complexity of the change from the second stage of hadith to the third, orthodox stage. In Tadrib ar-Rawi , at the beginning of the second century hijra , Imam as-Suyuti said that the sciences related to hadith consisted of three disciplines: 'ilm tawin alhadith , 'ilm al-hadith , 'ilm usra. A well-known scholar of the third century lists the science as having 200 disciplines. Another scholar listed 50 and we look at what these are. Ibn al-Khaldun in al-Muqaddima defined the roots of the hadith methodology as five: 1) The nasikh and mansukh verses of the Qur'an; 2) 'Ilm ar-rijal , that is the knowledge of the transmitters ;

3) The method of transmission; 4) Terminology of the isnad; 5) 'Ilm mustalah al-hadith, the terminology used to describe hadith. What we have indicated is happening, which is the subsuming of the matter of fiqh under the hadith discipline. Thus, from the first and the last of these seven, it is clearly a system designed to subsume all the Islamic sciences, Qur'anic and legal, under its method. The full 50 sciences of 'ilm al-hadith we will look at from Malik, al-'ulum al-hadith , and added to these according to as-Suyuti in al-Itqan. In alItqan according to as-Suyuti, they added to this the study of Arabic morphology, syntax, etc. So then, we come to 'ilm al-hadith, we find that 35 categories of 'ilm al-hadith have developed: 1. Knowledge of the masanid hadith (al-hadith al-musnad): one which has reached us by a full isnad from a Companion who had it from the Prophet. 2. Ar-riwayat al-mawqufa, one whose primary source is one of the Companions, i.e. it stops at a Companion. 3. Study of a hadith whose first narrator is not mentioned. 4. Study of the Sahaba . 5. Al-hadith al-mursal: defined as the most difficult subject; no one except the most learned can handle this subject. Such hadiths lack a complete isnad, in that the Tabi'i does not mention the Companion from whom he heard it. So already you see not only the creation of an elite, but the creation of a super elite who will be the only people who will be able to give the final words on the crucial matters of the Deen. Mursal is related by Tabi'un . 6. Al-hadith al-munqati': different from mursal but also narrated by one of the Tabi'un . It has a missing link somewhere in the isnad.There are three kinds. 7. Al-hadith al-musalsal. It had eight type and includes the action mentioned in the hadith. 8. Al-hadith al-mu'an'an : transmitted without mentioning how the transmission occurred. 9. Al-hadith al-mu'dal : Two or more links missing.

10. Al-hadith al-mudraj : in which the narrator has included his own words or someone else's in the text. 11. Study of Tabi'un. 12. Study of Tabi'i at-Tabi'un (the Followers of the Followers). 13. Study of al-akabir 'an al-asaghir :the greater from the lesser, i.e. a senior from a junior narrator, or a prolific from a lesser narrator. 14. Study of the Companions' descendants. 15. 'Ilm al-jarh wa 't-ta'dil : challenging the validity of the narrator.. 16. 'Ilm fiqh al-hadith: knowledge of fiqh derived from hadith. 17. Nasikh and mansukh in hadith . 18.'Ilm ghara'ib al-hadith : uncommon words in hadith . 19. Al-hadith al-mashhur : well-known. 20. Al-hadith al-gharib : uncommon words in hadith. 21. Al-hadith al-mufrad : from Makka, Madina or Kufa. 22. Al-hadith ash-shadhdh : rare, i.e. only one reliable narrator. 23. Hadith not contradicted by any other. 24. Schools of muhaddithun. 25. 'Ilm mudhakarat al-hadith : memorisation. 26. 'Ilm at-tas-hif : manuscript errors. 27. Study of relatives of Sahaba , Tabi'un , etc. 28. Study of the genealogies of the muhaddithun . 29. Study of names of muhaddithun. 30. Study of the mawali (freed slaves) among narrators. 31. Study of the Sirat of Rasulallah, salla'llahu 'alayhi wa salim. 32. Study of the first collectors.

33. Study of the mode of hadith classification. 34. Study of Arabic grammar. 35. Study of al-hadith an-nazil: texts with a larger number of transmitters in the isnad. The result of these sciences, of these 35 to 50 sciences, produces the final textual product, the hadith , which is then boxed in 1 of 50 basic classifications which categorise its degree of authenticity and strength and weakness. So then we come to the categorising of the hadith and look now at what it is: 1. As-sahih: free of fault, several chains, more than one source. 2. Al-hasan: reputable source and transmitters, yet not sahih. 3. Ad-da'if: neither (1) nor (2), weak. 4. Al-musnad: chain goes to the Prophet, salla'llahu 'alayhi wa sallam. 5. Al-muttasil: all links mentioned by later transmitters. 6. Al-marfu': reaches the ma'sum (i.e. the Prophet), regardless of continuity in chains of transmitters. 7. Al-mawquf : reaches Sahaba regardless of continuity of chain of transmitters. 8. Al-maqtu': narrated from one of the Tabi'un . 9. Al-munqati': incomplete isnad. 10. Al-mursal: narrated by a prominent Tabi'i. 11. Al-mu'dal: two or more consecutive links missing. 12. Al-mudallas: forged text or transmission. 13. Ash-shadhdh: a veracious narrator whose hadith contradicts others. 14. Al-gharib: gharib al-alfaz: uncommon words; gharib al-matn: uncommon content; gharib as-sanad: uncommon chain. 15. Al-mu'an'an: all links connected by the preposition 'an . 16. Al-mu'allaq: one or more transmitters omitted from the beginning of chain. 17. Al-mufrad: one narrator, or narrator from one place.

18. Al-mudraj: whose narrator includes words of other narrators. 19. Al-mashhur: well-known. 20. Al-musahhaf as-sanad: text altered due to similarity of letters to one another. 21. Al-'ali: short chain. 22. An-nazil: long chain. 23. Al-musalsal: transmitted with the action mentioned in the text. 24. Al-ma'ruf: meanings well-known. 25. Al-munkar: a contradictory hadith transmitted by someone weak. 26. Al-mazid: like another, with an extra unnecessary element in the isnad. 27. An-nasikh: abrogates a former shari'a judgement. 28. Al-mansukh: abrogated. 29. Al-maqbul: accepted and practised. 30. Al-mushkil: difficult words or meanings in it. 31. Al-mushtarak: with ambiguous words. 32. Al-mu'talif: names with the same form that can be read variously. 33. Al-mukhtalif: as 32 34. Al-matruh: contradicts direct evidence. 35. Al-matruk: chain with a know liar. 36. Al-mu'awwal : contradicts reason, Qur'an and practice. 37. Al-mubayyan: clear. 38. Al-mujmal: opposite. 39. Al-mu'allal: seems accurate but has a hidden defect. 40. Al-mudtarib: different recorded versions of the same hadith. 41. Al-muhmal: narrators not in books of 'ilm ar-rijal .

42. Al-majhul: sectarian position of transmitters not known. 43. Al-mawdu': forged by its narrator. 44. Al-maqlub: there one name is substituted for another in the isnad or text. 45. Al-ma'thur: transmitted by a later generation inside the same family. 46. Al-qudsi: Divine Words not Qur'anic in source. 47. Al-'aziz: one of 13 kinds of sahih and hasan . 48. Za'id ath-thiqa: a kind of hasan. 49. Al-mutawatir: impossible of forgery since it has so many chains. 50. Al-mu'allal: seems accurate but has a hidden defect. Now, it must be kept in mind that the hadith does not and cannot stand by its isnad alone in the majority of the cases. To back up scientifically as it were, the concept of isnad as evidence, isnad can never be absolutely programmed; the concept of isnad needs a sub-science to validate the man in the isnad. And this science was created, called 'Ilm ar-Rijal , that is, the science of the men. The science of the narrators, their names, their genealogical lineages, their lives, the dates of their death, their character assessment, the circumstances of reception and transmission of hadith as well as the topics they related and the ijaza that they may have. Remember al-Bukhari and "the Sacred Six" collected the hadith . Others assembled these police files of the transmitters. The main books on the subject are four: 1. The Kitab of Ibn Manda, by Abu 'Abdullah ibn Yahya who died in 301 hijra. 2. Hilyat al-Awliya' by Abu Nu'aym al-Isbahani who died in 430 hijra. 3. The Kitab of Musa, Muhammad ibn Abu Bakr al-Isbahani, died in 581 hijra. 4. Al-Isti'ab of Ibn 'Abdu'l-Barr. who died in 463 hijra. Then Ibn al-Athir anthologised them in his Usd al-Ghaba . Thus the logical theory implied the study of the 'ulama' . Logically you have to examine the biography, the veracity, the political allegiance of the men who wrote the biographies. For once the lived experience and its direct witnessing ceased to be the foundation of life, then the new closed system becomes not only inaccessible to critical examination, but has unquestioned matrices in whose name alone new things and ideas can be expressed. One should be aware that alongside this total system of hadith methodology that we have outlined, there exists another twin

system using an almost identical set of matrices, disciplines and producing hadith which themselves radically contradict the version of history and in some matters the Sunna as contained in the other system; that is the Shi'a system of hadith . The Shi'a riwayats brand our isnads as unacceptable, our rijal as hopelessly compromised politically and personally, and needless to say, our muhaddithun make the same accusations against them. In other words, what we have found is a closed system which does not need anything outside itself to justify itself. So it is perfectly logical that another identical system can be set up with people teaching the opposite, which in itself is a critique of the other. This is a total critique of anyone who is not in the system. In the end, this system not only attacks the Shi'a hadith but this system also attacks Malik. This system says: here Malik is in error because here we say this and are not interested in 'Amal , it does not fit into our system. We cannot relinquish our texts and isnad and 'ilm ar-rijal , although the man giving you the judgement that he has taken and extracted from our methodology in 99 cases out of 100 does not know the methodology, has not 'ilm ar-rijal , has not put his foot in the door of the total methodology of the hadith system, whether he is a Qadi, or an 'alim , or a modernist who picks what he likes from where he likes, in order to back up his outlook. The most ironic fact is that the major criticism of the Shi'a hadith collection, as opposed to our hadith collection by our muhaddithun , is their lateness in time. Precisely a key issue in relation to the event of the Sunna . One of the reasons they say, "We do not accept the Shi'a hadith " is because they are a copy of our methodology, but then they have said their methodology is absolutely foolproof. Secondly it is later than ours and less authentic. Therefore, they are saying they are more authentic by being earlier. Then in that case we are more authentic by being earlier and by being in the right place! So now the revised version of events is that the best book after the Qur'an is the Sahih of Imam al-Bukhari when Imam ash-Shafi'i said, "The best book after the Qur'an is the Muwatta'." And what is better and previous cannot be improved by what is lesser and later, because nearness to the event in time and nearness to the event in place and the high position of Imam Malik as author, being higher than Imam al-Bukhari, in all his excellence and splendour, makes incontrovertibly the prior superior to the latter. Thus this system's emergence politically and pragmatically insists that we have no choice but to conclude that the existence of the editors is its own self-justification, access is for an elite, initiation is a lifetime study, authorization implies building the elite into the power structure, due to its complexity and the power of its allencompassing nature, and due to its magical or unscientific linguistic indestructibility. Due to the magical equation of the hadith with the Sunna , its supporters dominate the men of Qur'an, the men of fiqh, and the men of Islam in every aspect. It is static, monolithic, unassailable, inaccessible, incomprehensible

as a totality, and totalitarian as an instrument of power. It only remains for a political regime to cut these men off from access to political decision-making and leave them to play in the structural edifice, and Islam can be declared a state religion, confirmed by these experts to be nowhere visible in the body politic, and yet have the regime insist that Islam is alive and well, for the system is taught, exists and is studied in its totality. This is the situation of the current power elite and the version of Islam that they are prepared to tolerate. What is its opposite? A live Islam of Qur'an and Sunna being embodied as social 'amal . This is simple, radical and active, implying the immediate establishment of power by the obligatory and necessary act of obeying the prime pillars of Islam: shahada, salat, zakat , sawm , hajj , followed by jihad annually with an amir. Now, for the zakat collection, an amir is necessary. On the collection of zakat , the Islamic entity has been created, the dynamic process has begun, the jihad will follow inexorably, as Allah has decreed necessary. One of the scholars from Malik, 'Abdullah ibn al-Mubarak, said - and he died in 181 AH "The beginning of knowledge is the intention, then listening, then understanding, then action, then preservation and then spreading it." The beginning of knowledge is intention, then listening - listening, not text -, not text, direct experience. You know that in Imam Malik's lifetime, someone came to him and said, "I have learned the Muwatta' in forty days." And he said, "Go away. Have you taken in forty days what it took me forty years to understand?" This is the opposite. The opposite is incompatible with the school that we have been mentioning. It is existential. The beginning of knowledge is the intention, then listening, then understanding. The listening is the taking from the teacher; the understanding is returning it to the teacher, the confirmation. Then action, that is, politics, that is, establishing government. The preservation, that is, a Qadi passing sentence which the amir empowers to be enacted, preserving the reality of the Sunna and then spreading it. That is da'wa . Let us go back to al-Muwatta' of Imam Malik and let us look at the simplicity, at the all-inclusiveness and how in fact nothing will be lost if we take this way, without any conflict or abrasive confrontation or implication or rejection of the hadith as hadith , because I have said that what is at issue is the functioning Islam that is produced by the educated elite of the Muslims. Look at what we have, and this is, remember, the earliest, the first, the most pure, the most guaranteed version

of the living Sunna . In the place of the living Sunna were the primary factors, the primary dynamic of the method which is, that 'amal confirms reality. The Books of the Muwatta' arethe Book of the Times of the Prayer, the Book of Purity, the Book of Prayer, the Book of Forgetfulness in Prayer, Jumu'a , the Book of Prayer in Ramadan, Tahajjud , Prayer in Congregation, Shortening the Prayer, the Two 'Ids, the Book of the Eclipse Prayer, Asking for Rain, the Qibla , the Qur'an, Burials, Zakat , Fasting, I'tikaf in Ramadan, Hajj , Jihad , Vows and Oaths, Sacrificing Animals, Slaughtering Animals, Game, 'Aqiqa' (aqiqa is the animal killed in celebration of the birth of a child), Fara'id (the fixed shares of inheritance instituted by the Qur'an), Marriage, Divorce, Suckling, Business Transactions, Qirad(qirad is wealth put in by an investor in the trust of an agent for use in commercial purposes, an agent receiving his wage by taking a designated share of the profits), Sharecropping, Renting Land, Pre-emption in Property, Judgements, Wills and Testaments, Setting fee and wala' (wala' is the tie of clientship established between a free slave and the person who frees him whereby the free slave becomes integrated into the family of the person), Mukatab (mukatab is a slave who acquires his freedom against future payments or instalment payments to his owner), Mudabbar (mudabbar is a slave that has been given a kitaba , that is a contract to be freed after his master's death), Qasama (an oath taken by 50 members of a tribe or locality to refute accusations of complicity in unclear cases of homicide), Madinah, The Decree (I might mention here that the Book of the Decree by Imam Malik is enough for all the philosophical meditation and disputation on the subject of the Qadar - along with the Qur'an it dispenses with the need for the 'Ashari kalam ), Good Character, Dress, Description of the Messenger of Allah, sallallahu 'alayhi wa salim, the Evil Eye, Book of Hair, Visions, Greetings, General Points, Oath of Allegiance, Speech, Jahannam , Sadaqa , Knowledge, Supplication of the Unjustly Wronged, and the last, wonderful Book of the Names of the Prophet, sallallahu 'alayhi wa salim. So we look at Malik's book, al-Muwatta', and its commentaries and we find that from the Muwatta' we come to the Mudawwana , which is again all existential, all practical, all applied, like breathing fresh air after being underground. If you come from that other method to this, it is like coming from the underground into fresh air because it is immediate, particular application. It puts into the hands of those who study it the desire to practise it, the knowledge that it can be practised, the knowledge that the governance can be in your hands, the political power can be in your hands and if it is not in your hands, that you can get it. The means is an absolutely simple series of mechanisms which have been put into action by a group of people and for which the victory is a sure promise by Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, and demonstrated by the Prophet, sallallahu 'alayhi wa salim. The beginning of Islam from its time of helplessness to its time of power is when Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, granted to Rasulallah, sallallahu 'alayhi wa salim, authority for jihad. Therefore the Muslim inhabits not a Makkan Islam, there is no Makkan Islam for the modern Muslim, despite what some misguided people, who

are highly thought of today, have said in various places. You cannot live a Makkan Islam. It is obligatory to take the deen according to the ayat of the Qur'an which says the words, "that this day We have completed your deen and called it Islam". From this point you cannot go back. You have to take the whole of the deen . What is demonstrated is that right from the beginning it will be successful, but it is because the fara'id have to be protected. And again, one needs to decode the Muwatta' because you will have the hadith which are included, as we saw, in order to be perfectly clear to everybody that the 'amal is dominant unless you are going to do what happened here, which is basically withdraw human trust from the men of the highest calibre in the human story. So to sum up, in the end of the day, what we can identify is not specific differences in detailed fiqh, but seven stages in an on-going process which leads to an unavoidable conclusion. One: The abandoning of a methodology based on multiple witnesses on the primacy of Madina, as the Messenger's city, sallallahu 'alayhi wa salim, and the school of 'amal . Two: The adoption, one hundred years later of a methodology based on texts, based on transmitters whose authors have not in turn been validated. Three: The definition of the Madinan Islam as one madhhab among three others: one Kufan-based, one by a student of the Madinan Islam and one by a later collector of hadith who never claimed to have a school. Four: The subservience of the four, now defined as schools, but in fact, four Imams representing the independent authority of fiqh as the Islamic springboard of action, the subservience of the four to a new, politically backed Islam founded on a triple complex of a quintuple complex of the hadith collector's methodology. Five: The logical conclusion. In order for the establishment of an absolutist, hadith -based system - the annihilation of the four madh-habs had to happen. Six: With this could be achieved a dictatorial rule without fuqaha', for the fiqh is still embedded in the madhhab system and the hadith inside constitutionalism, and need never be actualised in society, for the legal justice system of this Islam would have been obliterated. Seven: Since the Muslims are defeated politically in their inability to break the usury-system chains that bind them, the implication is that they must return to the primal mode of Islam in Madina hand the 'amal of its people which is what we have outlined and is what we have proposed.

This cannot be considered as causing division among the Muslims because by this false unification of the Muslims they have been unified in a tomb from which they cannot escape, in which they are politically powerless, in which they have no land with frontiers that can call itself Dar al-Islam within which the Shari'a, the Book and the Sunna are in power. Therefore, for the liberation of the Muslims and to open the way for the Muslims, we must return to the primal Islam of Book and Sunna taking its source from Rasulallah, sallallahu 'alayhi wa salim, in Madina, taking it from its Imams whose greatest Imam is Imam Malik, Imam of Dar al-Hijra, irrelevant to the matter of madhhab, only relevant to the primal Islam which is the Sunna, which is what he stood for, what he taught and which went from Madinah into Africa. We must follow its traces and revive it and impose it by force, by power and by the only possible way that will return activism with victory to the Muslims. So to end the matter, we say that whoever speaks of the one who wants to go back to the Book and the Sunna and the way of Madinah as being in some way making trouble for the Muslims, is a shaytan. This is the middle way, this is the way of sanity and this is the primal way and you cannot say you follow the Salaf if you do not follow the Salaf. And we have the root in our hand and if we plant it, it will grow and have success.