I thought it was all good until they went on to define each of the 3 divisions. The Traditional Islam section talked about the different Islamic schools of law and included the Shia ones as well. It also mentioned sufism and the different paths. Then it went to Islamic Fundamentalism and it listed the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafism/Wahhabism and Revolutionary Shi’ism as part of Islamic Fundamentalism. This was shocking since the scholars the listed in the top 50 were most Salafi or supported of the Islamic brotherhood. They said that Islamic Fundamentalism makes up about 3% of the Muslim world’s population. Does that mean all the salafis/wahhhabis, all the members of the ikhwaan al muslimeen, and all the revolutionary shias only make up 3% of the Muslim world’s population?

I am not necessarily in agreement with Salafism or the Muslim Brotherhood, but we have to be fair and be honest. They aren’t really fundamentalists. In fact the Muslim Brotherhood was started by traditional Sufi Muslims. I was a little disappointed when I read that John Esposito is one of the Chief Editors. I would expect him to know better, unless there was influence from the financiers and organizing governments involved in this. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was.

They also mentioned “The Aga Khan” as one of the Top 50. I wonder if they knew the other 49 wouldn’t consider him to be Muslim.

In conclusion according to the report, since I’m Hanafi, I’m a part of the Orthodox Traditional group. Since I want follow the Qur’an and Sunnah and follow Prophet Muhammad (saas), which is what Salafism is, I’m also a Fundamentalist.

You can read the full publication here (PDF).

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• Why I love non-Muslims, especially Orthodox Jews
• The Sunni Unity Pledge
• Wearing Jeans, Ties, Dress pants, T-Shirts, and other non-traditional Muslim clothing

Intersting how the King can make dua raising his hands at the grave but when other Muslims try this, the brothers of the office of promoting the good and forbidding the evil stops them.  Skip to 1:30 in the video to see it.

May the blessings, peace and mercy be upon the Prophet Muhammad.

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• Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Dismisses Chief of Religious Police
• An Appeal to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz
• The non-Muslim who was trusted for the protection of the Prophet Muhammad (s)

The Muslim Link has refused to advertise a fundraiser event for an Islamic School in Baltimore (Al Rahmah School Educational Trust – ASET) because the event’s speaker is Shaykh Hamza Yusuf. Now if the Muslim Link newspaper called itself the MyJamaat Link newspaper I wouldn’t care if they didn’t advertise an Islamic School fundraiser event with Shaykh Hamza Yusuf. That actually would make sense, but when the newspaper claims to be the “Muslim Link” and advertises to all the Muslim communities throughout the MD-DC-VA, why would it discriminate against such a mainstream and widely recognized speaker like Shaykh Hamza Yusuf.

It didn’t happen once or twice but many times. It also happened to me when I was working with the United Against Malaria event and we attempted to get the flyer put in the Muslim Link. I thought it wouldn’t be a big deal, but I was wrong. The Muslim Link (and Dar us Salaam) couldn’t support the Malaria event unless the names were removed from the ad. I thought this was ridiculous and hypocritical since Muslim Link had their own fundraiser event in which they invited a non-Muslim, George Galloway as the keynote speaker. Eventually they made their own full page ad (worth $900) and advertised it for free, after I sent an email to several community members (An example of why talking with the organizers don’t work, until things get out).

Is advertising an event with George Galloway better than advertising an event with Shaykh Hamza Yusuf? George Galloway was speaking at a fund-raising event for a Muslim newspaper. Shaykh Hamza is speaking at an event to fund raise money for an Islamic school in Baltimore. Does a Muslim newspaper fundraiser ad with a non-Muslim on it take preference over an Islamic School fundraiser ad with a Muslim.

What’s the difference in taking out the name when you know who’s speaking at the event already and your advertising it anyway. That actually seems like your tricking people. What if a MyJamaat person saw the advertisement without Shaykh Hamza Yusuf’s name and said “Hey, this event looks good. It’s for an Islamic school. Let me take my family and go.” When they get there they find out Shaykh Hamza (who is not from MyJamaat) is speaking they’ll be disappointed. Who would they blame? The Muslim Link. Why? Where is the name of the speaker? In fact it would be better to put the name of the speaker, so everyone knows who’s speaking and everyone who wants to go will go.

It can make a big difference with names like Shaykh Hamza Yusuf or Shaykh Yasir Qadhi or Imam Siraj Wahhaj on an advertisement. If the flyer didn’t have the name, how many people would go? Much less. Muslim Link should know this since they paid so much to get George Galloway. They wanted the crowd so the advertised his name everywhere. Why prevent an Islamic school in Baltimore this same marketing technique just because you don’t like and/or agree with that speaker.

It is not difficult to write “The views and opinions expressed by the organizations and speakers in the advertisements do not necessarily agree with that of the owners and operators of The Muslim Link.” They already have it on their website, why can’t they put it on their newspaper.

I don’t care if Muslims don’t like Shaykh Hamza Yusuf. They don’t bother me. My problem is that when a Muslim newspaper that caters to all Muslims and advertised everywhere wants to remove names of Muslim speakers just because they are not in agreement with the owners and operators of the newspaper.

What bothers me more is that Imam Safi Khan is their adviser and told me personally that Imam Zaid Shakir came to Dar us Salaam and did an event. Can someone please tell me the difference between Imam Zaid Shakir and Shaykh Hamza Yusuf? Seriously? What is it the difference other than one is white and one is black. One is taller than the other. So if someone was to do an event with Imam Zaid Shakir, would the ad be fine even with his name on it? What makes Shaykh Hamza Yusuf so special?

For all those brothers and sisters who are going to comment and say “you should email them instead of blogging it”. I have and so have many others several times and the same thing keeps repeating itself. Usually when things go public, changes happen faster and for the better (or worse), but change does happen.

For the brothers and sisters that are part of the Muslim Link, I love you guys all for the sake of Allah but this childish division needs to stop. Either you be straight up with your audience and tell them we don’t support or advertise events that have speakers we do not agree with or you guys be fair and open to advertising events. I understand there is a line to be drawn, but I believe the Pledge of Mutual Respect and Cooperation is that line. Last I checked, AlMaghrib’s and Zaytuna’s scholars are all signatories. AlMaghrib started at Dar-us-Salaam, so the community there would not have any issues with Sh. Hamza’s name on a advertisement in the Muslim Link.

Ultimately, this post would not have been necessary if The Muslim Link would just put aside differences and be fair.

May Allah (swt) forgive me for anything I have said wrong.

Here is the advertisement that sparked this controversy:

Related posts:

• Baltimore Islamic School Fundraiser with Shaykh Hamza Yusuf – 11/7/09 – 1:30 PM
• Shaykh Hamza Yusuf – Climbing Mount Purgatorio
• Shaykh Hamza Yusuf – From Protest to Engagement

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — The Saudi king on Saturday dismissed the chief of the religious police and a cleric who condoned killing the owners of TV networks that broadcast “immoral” content, signaling an effort to weaken the country’s hard-line Sunni establishment.

…

The king also changed the makeup of an influential body of religious scholars, for the first time giving more moderate Sunnis representation to the group whose duties include issuing the religious edicts known as fatwas.

Not really sure if these are good things or bad things, but at least promotion of violence and killing are not tolerated anymore by the Saudi government.

Source

Related posts:

• An Appeal to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz
• Saudi Arabia builds first University for men and women, Scholar doesn’t like it and loses his position
• Saudi Arabia Considering to Open Movie Theaters after Three Decades

Mystical power
Why Sufi Muslims, for centuries the most ferocious soldiers of Islam, could be our most valuable allies in the fight against extremism
By Philip Jenkins | January 25, 2009

THIRTY YEARS AGO this month, the collapse of the Shah’s government marked the launch of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, and since that point the topic of Islam has rarely been out of the headlines. All too often, we hear about Islam in the context of intolerance and, often, violence — of Al Qaeda savagery, of Taliban misogyny, of nuclear weapons in Pakistan and perhaps in Iran itself. Even in Europe, many fear the growth of a radical Islamic presence. For three decades, Western observers have worked fervently to comprehend Islam’s global power and appeal, its ability to inspire the poor and to topple governments. But in all that intense attention, most observers have missed a crucial part of the story: a global web of devout religious brotherhoods that by all logic should be a critical ally against extremism.

Sufis are the power that has made Islam the world’s second-largest religion, with perhaps 1.2 billion adherents. Not a sect of Islam, but rather heirs of an ancient mystical tradition within both the Sunni and Shia branches of the faith, Sufis have through the centuries combined their inward quest with the defense and expansion of Islam worldwide. At once mystics and elite soldiers, dervishes and preachers, charismatic wonder-workers and power-brokers, ascetic Sufis have always been in the vanguard of Islam. While pushing forward the physical borders of Islam, they have been essential to the spiritual and cultural fullness of the faith. Today, the Sufi tradition is deeply threaded through the power structures of many Muslim countries, and the orders are enjoying a worldwide renaissance.

To look at Islam without seeing the Sufis is to miss the heart of the matter. Without taking account of the Sufis, we cannot understand the origins of most contemporary political currents in the Middle East and Muslim South Asia, and of many influential political parties. We can’t comprehend the huge popular appeal of Islam for

women, who so often seem excluded from Muslim life. Sufis are central to the ability of Muslim communities to survive savage persecutions — in Chechnya, in Kosovo — and then launch devastating insurgencies. They are the muscle and sinew of the faith.

And, however startling this may seem, these very Sufis — these dedicated defenders and evangelists of mystical Islam — are potentially vital allies for the nations of the West. Many observers see a stark confrontation between the West and Islam, a global conflict that entered a traumatic new phase with the Iranian revolution. But that perspective ignores basic conflicts within the Muslim world itself, a global clash of values over the nature of religious practice, no less than overtly political issues. For the Islamists — for hard-line fundamentalists like the Saudi Wahhabis and the Taliban — the Sufis are deadly enemies, who draw on practices alien to the Quran. Where Islamists rise to power, Sufis are persecuted or driven underground; but where Sufis remain in the ascendant, it is the radical Islamist groups who must fight to survive.

Around the world, the Sufis are struggling against violent fundamentalists who are at once their deadly foes, and ours. To look at Islam without seeing the Sufis is to be ignorant of a crucial clash of civilizations in today’s world: not the conflict between Islam and the West, but an epochal struggle within Islam itself.

If the word “Sufi” conjures up any images for Americans, they normally involve mystical poetry or dance. Thirteenth century poet Rumi was a legendary Sufi, as are Turkey’s whirling dervishes. But these are just the most visible expressions of a movement that runs deeply through the last thousand years of Islam.

Emerging around the year 800, they were originally pious devotees, whose poor woolen clothes showed their humility: “Sufi” comes from the Arabic word for wool. Above all, the Sufis sought the divine reality or ultimate truth that stands above all the illusions and deceptions of the material world. In order to achieve ecstatic union with God, they incorporated techniques of sound and movement — chanting and music, swaying and dance. Believers joined in tight-knit brotherhoods or tariqahs, each following a charismatic leader (shaykh). Among the dozens of these orders, a few grew to achieve special influence, and some operate in dozens of nations, including the United States.

But the orders are more than confraternities of pious devotees. Early in their history, Sufis developed a powerful military streak, making them the knights of Islam, as well as the monks and mystics. Like the Japanese samurai, the brotherhoods trained their followers to amazing feats of devotion and overcoming pain. Fanatical dervish warriors were the special forces of every Islamic army from the 13th century through the end of the 19th.

The expansion of Islam outside the core areas of the Middle East is above all a Sufi story. Sufi orders led the armies that conquered lands in Central and South Asia, and in Southeastern Europe; through their piety and their mysticism, the brotherhoods then won the local populations over to Islam. They presented an Islam that incorporated local traditions and worship styles, including Christian saints and Hindu gods. Today, Sufi styles and practices dominate in the non-Arab Muslim world: in India and Pakistan, in Indonesia and Malaysia, Nigeria and Senegal, and in the Muslim countries of Central Asia, such as Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

Over the centuries, the territories where Sufi orders seeded Islam have evolved from the faith’s frontiers to its demographic heartlands. These regions now encompass Islam’s largest and fastest-growing populations. Of the eight nations with the world’s largest Muslim communities, only one (Egypt) is Arab. A fifth of the world’s Muslims today identify with Sufism, and for many millions more, Sufism is simply part of the air they breathe.

The Sufi orders enhanced their political role as Western empires encroached. When Islam was under threat, the Sufis were the trained soldiers, and their close-knit brotherhoods allowed them to form devastatingly effective resistance movements. Sufi orders led anti-colonial movements from Morocco to Indonesia. Most Americans, for instance, have heard of the stubborn Chechen guerrillas, but few realize how absolutely this movement is rooted in Sufism. When the Russians pushed south into Muslim lands in the 19th century, the heroic Sufi sheikh Imam Shamil launched a decades-long guerrilla war. Even Stalin’s terror campaigns could not root out the Sufi brotherhoods. The fearsome leader of modern-day Chechen resistance, Shamil Basayev, was named for the original imam.

A similar story can be told of other oppressed peoples, in Kurdistan, Kashmir, Albania, Kosovo, and elsewhere, who owed their solidarity and cohesion to the immense power of the Sufi brotherhoods.

The Sufis might sound like America’s worst nightmare. Not only do they ground political activism in religion, but their faith spreads through intense and secretive brotherhoods, led by charismatic masters: this recalls every sinister stereotype of Muslim fanaticism that potboiler thrillers have offered us over the decades. But it would be a terrible mistake to see the Sufis as enemies. Sufis certainly have fought Western forces through the years, and Sufi-founded movements have on occasion engaged in terrorist actions — witness the Chechens. But in the vast majority of cases, such militancy has been essentially defensive, resisting brutal colonial occupations. This is very different from the aggressive global confrontation pursued by groups such as Al Qaeda.

Today, moreover, Sufi brotherhoods face a deadly danger from the strict puritanical or fundamentalist Islam represented by Qaeda and similar movements, which are as threatening to the Sufi brotherhoods as they are to the West. To the extent that we, like the Sufis, face a real danger from violent jihadi fundamentalism, our interests are closely aligned with those of the Sufis.

But the Sufis are much more than tactical allies for the West: they are, potentially, the greatest hope for pluralism and democracy within Muslim nations. The Sufi religious outlook has little of the uncompromising intolerance that characterizes the fundamentalists. They have no fear of music, poetry, and other artistic forms — these are central to their sense of the faith’s beauty — and the brotherhoods cherish intellectual exploration. Progressive Sufi thinkers are quite open to modern knowledge and science.

From their beginnings, too, Sufi traditions have been religiously inclusive. Wherever the orders flourish, popular Islamic religion focuses on the tombs of saints and sheikhs, who believers venerate with song and ritual dance. In fact, they behave much like traditional-minded Catholics do when they visit their own shrines in Mexico or southern Italy. People organize processions, they seek healing miracles, and women are welcome among the crowds. While proudly Islamic, Sufi believers have always been in dialogue with other great religions.

This open-mindedness contrasts with the much harsher views of the fundamentalists, who we know by various names. Salafism claims to teach a return to the pure religion taught by the prophet Muhammad in the seventh century, and in that early Islamic community Salafis think they can find all they need to know about life and law. The most powerful and best-known version of this back-to-basics ideology is the Wahhabi movement that emerged in the 18th century, and which in modern times has built a worldwide presence on the strength of Saudi oil money. At its most extreme, this exclusive tradition rejects knowledge that is not clearly rooted in the Quran and Islamic legal thought, and regards other religions and cultures as dangerous rivals lacking any redeeming virtues. Al Qaeda and its affiliates represent an extreme and savage manifestation of this fundamentalist current.

As fundamentalist Islam spreads around the world, Sufism is one of its targets, even in such strongholds as Indonesia, Pakistan, and Nigeria. Often this comes in the form of ideological struggle, but open violence has broken out as well. Sudan’s Islamist government attacks the black Sufi population of Darfur; in Iraq, suicide bombers target Sufi centers. Sufis have literally everything to lose from the continued advance of the Islamist extremists.

But Sufis are anything but passive victims, and in their resilience lies their true importance to the West. In many nations, Sufi brotherhoods exercise influence within local regimes, and those alliances allow them to drive back radicalism. Sufi brotherhoods have emerged as critical supporters of government in several post-Communist regimes, including in former Yugoslav regions like Kosovo and Bosnia, and in Albania. When a Qaeda-affiliated Islamist movement arose in Uzbekistan, the government’s intimate alliance with the Sufi orders allowed it to destroy the insurgents quite thoroughly. Syria cultivates tolerant-minded Sufi orders as the best means of fending off Islamist subversion. For similar reasons, even the Chinese government openly favors Sufism. Hard as they try, fundamentalist radicals find it impossible to gain much of a foothold in societies where Islam is synonymous with Sufism, and where Sufi loyalty is deeply tied to cultural and national identity.

In 2007, the influential RAND Corporation issued a major report titled “Building Moderate Muslim Networks,” which urged the US government to form links with Muslim groups that opposed Islamist extremism. The report stressed the Sufi role as moderate traditionalists open to change, and thus as potential allies against violence.

Some Western nations are just now grasping the rich rewards that would come from an alliance with the Sufi, with Muslim forces who can claim such impeccable historical and religious credentials. The British government especially has befriended the Sufi orders, and has made groups like the British Muslim Forum and the Sufi Muslim Council its main conversation partners in the Muslim community.

Sufis, better than anyone, can tell disaffected young Muslims that the quest for peace is not a surrender to Western oppression, still less a betrayal of Islam, but rather a return to the faith’s deepest roots. And while Sufis have religious reasons for favoring peaceful and orderly societies, they also stand to benefit mightily from government support in their struggle against the fanatics. As the fundamentalists have expanded, they press hard on Muslim populations who are overwhelmingly drawn from countries where the Sufi current has always dominated Islamic life, from Pakistan, Turkey, and North Africa.

If this British model works, it would encourage the growth of a Euro-Islam that could reconcile easily with modernity and democracy, while yielding nothing of its religious content.

Nobody is pretending that building bridges with Sufis will resolve the many problems that divide the West from the Islamic world. In countries like Afghanistan or Somalia, warfare and violence might be so deeply engraved into the culture that they can never be expunged. Yet in so many lands, reviving Sufi traditions provide an effective bastion against terrorism, much stronger than anything the West could supply by military means alone. The West’s best hope for global peace is not a decline or secularization of Islam, but rather a renewal and strengthening of that faith, and above all of its spiritual and mystical dimensions.

Philip Jenkins is Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University. He is author of “The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia — and How It Died” (HarperOne, 2008).

Source

Related posts:

• Pakistani Government turns to Sufis and creates the “Sufi Advisory Council” (SAC) to combat “extremism”
• Imam Hasan al-Banna: the Reviver of Islam, the Sufi & the Reformer
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Before I begin my comments on Umar’s post, I want to say that I enjoy his blog daily.  I’m an avid reader and commenter.  In fact from what I read in the past, I can say we agree 80% of the time.  This post probably adds up to 10% differences.

Umar Lee forgot about AlMaghrib Institute

So Umar said:

The vast majority, I will say almost all, RIMS come from at least a middle-class background. A big percentage are wealthy. Vey few are working-class. The reason for this is that the RIM message of peace with the modern world, liberal social views, a detachment from politics, pacifism, a love of kafir philosophers, and feminization, is not something that is going to appeal to the working-class or fly in the hood of people of any color.

RIMS are living the good life in the West and have a lot of dunya. They want to protect their position so they don’t want to rock the boat as the society is working well for them. Most have never been to a ghetto or working-class masjid and don’t have a clue as to how the other half feels. Many others, look down upon less affluent Muslims without fancy degrees, and see themselves as the elite class of the Muslim community. Any masculine form of Islam is seen as something for the poor and ignorant masses. American Salafis are barely even recognized as Muslims by RIMS.

The RIM message, even if they tried, would never succeed with the working-class and the poor. Because our experience in this society is different and we do not live in comfort and we are seeking to change the conditions here and not make peace with them and we are on the offensive and not the defensive.

The largest Islamic institute that teaches the Salafi aqida is AlMaghrib Institute.  In fact they are the largest institute in North America.  Nothing is as large and productive as AlMaghrib.  May Allah (swt) continue to bless them and improve their work.  They have over 30,000 students in North America.  If you look at every seminar they teach, you will find 95% of the student body are children of immigrant parents who fit the above category you described.  They are all well off and financially capable of giving their son/daughter $165 for a 2-weekend seminar, plus another $60 for dinner/lunch and maybe even let them use their car (or they have their own paid off my their parents).  I am part of this demographic.  I am a living example of this scenario.  My parents have paid for many of my Islamic classes until I started to work after graduation from university (which has only been less than a year).

Now I have also taken Zaytuna classes and I can guarantee you there are way more lower-class, White and Black American converts at Zaytuna classes than AlMaghrib classes.  In fact, Zaytuna classes are always cheaper and they always offer free scholarships for those who can’t afford.  AlMaghrib does the same for those who can’t afford but I still don’t see as much Black and White Americans in AlMaghrib classes as I see them in Zaytuna classes.  As further proof you can see that their isn’t an AlMaghrib presence in Philadelphia which probably has a large percentage of Black American Muslims as well as DC’s Muslim population presence at any AlMaghrib class in Virginia or Maryland.

Before all the AlMaghrib fans jump on me for this, I’d like to say I am not saying anything negative about AlMaghrib.  In fact I love AlMaghrib and I support them, becuase they are doing a lot of good wherever they go, mashaAllah.  The AlMaghrib community are my family by both in Islam and by blood.  I strongly support both AlMaghrib and Zaytuna and I see no difference in terms of what they want to do in the future.  They both want to establish Islamic universities and colleges where the highest caliber of knowledge is taught.  May Allah (swt) give them both success.  Ameen!

Umar said:

The only international political issue you will hear RIMS speak on (besides maybe Dafur or opposition to so-called honor killings and female genital mutilation) is Palestine. This is because they can speak on behalf of Palestine without using the language of the Islamic Movement. In their advocacy for Palestine they do not quote many actual Palestinians or the likes of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi or Sheikh Safir al-Hawali. Instead they will quote non-Muslims (often atheists who are hostile to any religion) such as Noam Chomsky and John Esposito. They will also never verbally support an Islamic group, such as Hamas, who are fighting for liberation based on the principals of Islam. In this they are ceding the political argument to secular forces in Palestine and here in the West they are just making an alliance with, and using the arguments of, the secular left.

Listen to this lecture here, where you will find Sh. Yasir Qadhi, Sh. Muhammad AlShareef, and Sh. Waleed Basyouni discussing the situation in Palestine and how Muslims should react.  It was also a fundraiser where they raised $150,000 in 4 hours!  MashaAllah!

Download audio file (hikmah.mp3)

Also read these articles by Sh. Yaser Birjas (who is Palestinian by the way) and Sh. Yasir Qadhi regarding the situation in Palestine.

Do they verbally support Hamas?  Do they quote the likes of Saykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi (may Allah preserve him)?  Please let me know if you find this.  JazakAllah khair.

Umar said:

Part of the RIM line of thinking is to invent an Islam that is completely detached from politics. Instead of looking at those Muslim leaders, such as Imam Hasan al-Banna, who saw the modern world , colonialism and Western domination and developed a system based on Islamic principals to reform Muslim societies based on the principals of the Sunnah, and admiring them, RIMS call this “Islamist Modernism” as they sit in non-Muslim countries in their affluence.

The historic role of many Muslim organizations in America has been to raise money for and support groups in Muslim countries seeking to reform their societies based on the principals of al-Islam. RIMS reject this. They want no part of helping any Islamic Movement and even slander those engaged in the revival. Simultaneously they are at peace with many corrupt Muslim regimes and are joined at the hip in fighting the Islamic Movement which they both seek to destroy. They cede the public and political life of Muslim societies to secular forces and opt to relegate the role of Islam to the home and family life.

In America RIMS use their position to claim the role of good harmless upper-class Western Muslims who have no affinity for, or attachment to, those misguided Third World Muslim movements trying to establish Sharia and remove tyrants. While the Islamic Revival is working in the trenches of Muslim societies to reform; RIMS prefer to sit in circles and make dhikr and make duah that one day a miracle will occur and everything will change. Those RIMS in America sit in coffee shops using language strange to Muslims, but well-known to grad students of liberal arts colleges, to distance themselves from the dirty masses in the revival.

Watch this lecture by Sh. Yasir Qadhi:

Umar Lee forgot about the great Salafi scholars

Now there is no way for any true American Salafi not to listen to what Sh. Albani say.  He is the authenticator of all the sahih hadith for salafis around the world.  He is the genious of the Salafi scholars. You will only hear positive remarks of Sh. Albani.  May Allah (swt) accept all Sh. Albani’s good deeds, forgive him and reward him with jannah.  Ameen!

Sh. Albani (rahimulllah) said:

All suicide missions in our current time are unsanctioned deeds that are all to be considered Haraam (prohibited). The suicide missions may be of the type that renders its practitioner eternally in the Fire or it could be the type that renders its practitioner to be from those who shall not reside eternally in the Fire as I have just explained.

But to view these suicide missions as a being a means to draw near to Allaah (praiseworthy act of worship) by killing oneself today for his land or his country then we say No (it is not an act that is praiseworthy).

Source

The Hamas military department supports suicide bombings and sanctions it as Islamic.  Do you agree or disagree with Sh. Albani?  Surely all true American Salafis will agree with his words of wisdom.

In the Friday Jan 9, 2009 khutbah by Shaykh Abdul Aziz al ash-Shaykh (Current Mufti of the Salafis) you will see that the Shaykh did not openly support Hamas at all.  Does that mean he is a RAND Muslim?  No it does not.  Sh. Albani does not agree with the way Hamas carry-outs some of their attacks.  Does that mean he is a RAND Muslim?

Umar said:

They will also never verbally support an Islamic group, such as Hamas, who are fighting for liberation based on the principals of Islam.

Based on what the Salafi scholars have said, is Hamas an Islamic group?  Are they fighting for liberation based on the principals of Islam?

Funny Note

Umar Lee, you also forgot to mention that ” Dr. Ingrid Matsson and ISNA are linked to Hamas* “.  I guess the RAND Institute forgot to mention that in their research.  So am guessing ISNA isn’t part of the “RIMS” crew, even though that’s Sh. Hamza’s largest American Muslim crowd every year.

* I’m being sarcastic for those who didn’t get the message so clearly.

Conclusion

How many Sufis are there in America?  How many Salafis are in America?  The vast majority of Muslims in America are neither and have no idea or knowledge what they are and what they represent.  The vast majority of Muslims in America are not students of knowledge.  The vast majority of Muslims in America do not even follow a madhab.  The vast majority of Muslims in America have no idea who the great revivers of Islam over the past one thousand years were.  The vast majority of Muslims in America do not even know what shariah is unless what they hear on TV.  Shaykh Hamza Yusuf may not present the shariah the way you like but he is a supporter of it.  One of the most fundamental aspects of tasawwuf is that you apply the shariah to yourself completely.  In other words you can’t be a sufi if you don’t have your salat, zakat, siyam and dhikr on lock.  Do you think RIMS have this on lock?  Applying the shariah to ourselves is part of the Islamic revival.

Let us end on what Allah has says in Surah Ra’d (Chapter 13):

إِنَّ اللّهَ لاَ يُغَيِّرُ مَا بِقَوْمٍ حَتَّى يُغَيِّرُواْ مَا بِأَنْفُسِهِمْ

“Allah does not change a people’s condition unless they change themselves.”

And Allah knows best!

Related posts:

• May Allah bless Umar Lee!
• Bayyinah Institute and AlMaghrib Institute Join Forces
• Salafi Scholars take a heavy blow in the UK

The Al-Shabab Mujahideen are probably the only group that is helping the Somali people in terms of establishing law and order in a land where anarchy exists. I haven’t read or even seen anything from any of the moderate Sufi scholars or websites regarding the destruction of these Sufi shrines.

Edit: I just want to make it clear that I do not support the destruction of the graves of Muslims.

Edit 2: Although many Somalians may appreciate the work that the Al-Shabab are doing in Somalia they still praise Al-Qaeda and are linked with them (via their videos) who are extremist Muslim and have deviated by the majority of the scholars of the ummah.

Allah knows best. May Allah (swt) forgive us all and guide us all.

Related posts:

• Somali President will agree with al-Shabab and establish Shariah, but not the “strict” version
• Sufi Muslims: for centuries the most ferocious soldiers of Islam
• Watching the World Cup, Haram in Somalia

Sheikh Ibrahim al-Gaith, head of the feared Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, made the concession after last week’s breakthrough public showings in Jeddah of the comedy feature “Manahi”.

“A movie could possibly be acceptable if it serves good and is suitable under Islam,” Sheikh Gaith said.

Gaith pulled back from comments he made two days earlier branding movies “an absolute evil” in the wake of screenings in the Red Sea port city.

“I did not say that we reject all cinema, but I said that we were not consulted during the organisation of these movie showings,” he explained.

For more than a week from Dec 9, the Rotana entertainment group, controlled by Saudi tycoon Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, showed “Manahi” to rapturous audiences in Jeddah and nearby Taif.

The screenings, approved by the provincial governor, Prince Khalid al-Faisal, sparked hopes that Saudi Arabia would soon allow public cinemas.

Before the first projection of the film, local religious police inspected the facility, a 1,200 seat conference hall, to make sure that men and women would remain separated, adhering to the country’s strict laws on separation of unrelated members of the opposite sexes.

For the three showings daily, women sat in the balcony of the hall while men and boys were on the ground floor.

There are no cinemas in Saudi Arabia, but some coffee shops surreptitiously put on movies for customers and many Saudis enjoy films at home on DVD and satellite television.

To experience a cinema, they have to travel to nearby Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates or other countries.

Hope the good outweighs the bad with this move, inshaAllah. Has anyone heard of the movie, “Manahi”?

Source

Related posts:

• Saudi Arabia builds first University for men and women, Scholar doesn’t like it and loses his position
• An Appeal to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz
• Tasawwuf Rises in Saudi Arabia – Mawlid 2006 in Jeddah, KSA

By Stéphane Lacroix

When on the first of October 1999 Shaykh Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani passed away at the age of 85, he was mourned by virtually everyone in the world of Salafi Islam. To many, he represented its third main contemporary reference, after ‘Abd al-’Aziz bin Baz (who himself had died a few months before) and Muhammad bin ‘Uthaymin (who would pass away in January 2001), both leading figures of the Saudi religious establishment. Salafi newspapers, journals, and websites celebrated this Syrian son of an Albanian clock-maker—whose family left Albania in 1923, when he was nine years old, and re-established itself in Damascus—who had become known as the muhaddith al-’asr (traditionist of the era), that is, the greatest hadith scholar of his generation.

How did al-Albani, with his undistinguished social and ethnic origins, come to occupy such a prestigious position in a field long monopolized by a religious elite from the Saudi region of Najd—The answer is, as we shall see through the example of al-Albani himself and some of his disciples, lies in his revolutionary approach to hadith.

The Wahhabi paradox

Common knowledge considers Shaykh Nasir al-Din al-Albani to be staunch proponent of Wahhabism, the discourse produced and upheld by the official Saudi religious establishment.¹ This is undoubtedly true in terms of ‘aqidah (creed), yet al-Albani strongly disagrees with the Wahhabis—and especially with their chief representatives, the ulama of the Saudi religious establishment—when it comes to fiqh (law). There, al-Albani points to a fundamental contradiction within the Wahhabi tradition: the latter’s proponents have advocated exclusive reliance on the Quran, the Sunna, and the consensus of al-salaf al-salih (the pious ancestors), yet they have almost exclusively relied on Hanbali jurisprudence for their fatwas—acting therefore as proponents of a particular school of jurisprudence, namely Hanbalism. According to al-Albani, this also applies to Muhammad bin ‘Abd al-Wahhab whom he describes as “salafi in creed, but not in fiqh.”

For al-Albani, moreover, being a proper “salafi in fiqh” implies making hadith the central pillar of the juridical process, for hadith alone may provide answers to matters not found in the Quran without relying on the school of jurisprudence. The mother of all religious sciences therefore becomes the “science of hadith,” which aims at re-evaluating the authenticity of known hadiths. According to al-Albani, hoever, independent reasoning must be excluded from the process: the critique of the matn (the content of the hadith) should be exclusively formal, i.e. grammatical or linguistic; only the sanad (the hadith’s chain of transmitters) may be properly put into question. As a consequence, the central focus of the science of hadith becomes ‘ilm al-rijal (the science of men), also known as ‘ilm al-jarh wa-l-ta’dil (the science of critique and fair evaluation), which evaluates the morality—deemed equivalent to the reliability—of the transmitters. At the same time—and contrary to earlier practices—al-Albani insists that the scope of this re-evaluation must encompass all existing hadiths, even those included in the canonical collections of Bukhari and Muslim, some of which al-Albani went so far as to declare weak.²

Revolutionary interpretations

As a consequence of the peculiarirty of this method, al-Albani ended up pronouncing fatwas that ran counter to the wider Islamic consensus and more specifically to Hanbali/Wahhabi jurisprudence. For instance, he wrote a book in which he redefined the proper gestures and formulae that constitute the Muslim prayer ritual “according to the Prophet’s practice”—and contrary to the prescriptions of all established schools of jurisprudence. Also, he stated that mihrabs—the niche found in a mosques indicating the direction of Mecca—were bid’a (an innovation) and declared licit to pray in a mosque with one’s shoes. Another controversial position was his call for Palestinians to leave the occupied territories since, he claimed, they were unable to practice their faith there as they should—something which is much more important than a piece of land. Finally, al-Albani took a strong stance against indulging in politics, repeating that “the good policy is to abandon politics”—a phrase implicitly aimed at the Muslim Brotherhood, whose political views he consistently denounced.

The presence of al-Albani in Saudi Arabia—where he was invited in 1961 by his good friend Shaykh ‘Abd al-’Aziz bin Baz to teach at the Islamic University of Medina—prompted embarrassed reactions from the core of the Wahhabi establishment, who disagreed with him but could hardly attack him because of his impeccable Wahhabi credentials in terms of creed. The controversy sparked by his book The Veil of the Muslim Woman, in which he argued that Muslim women should not cover their face—a position unacceptable by Saudi standards—, finally gave the Wahhabi establishment the justification needed to get him out of the Kingdom in 1963. He then re-established himself in his country of birth, Syria, before leaving for Jordan in 1979.³

However, the opposition al-Albani encountered from the Wahhabi religious establishment was not merely intellectual. By putting into question the methodological foundations upon which the Wahhabis had built their legitimacy, he was also challenging their position in the Saudi religious field.

From its inception, Wahhabism had established itself as a religious tradition—at the core of which laid a number of key books, both in creed and law. This tradition had been monopolized by a small religious aristocracy from Najd, first centered around Muhammad bin ‘Abd al-Wahhab and his descendants (known as the Al al-Shaykh) before opening up to a small number of other families. In the Saudi system as it took shape, the members of aristocracy would become the only legitimate transmitters of the Wahhabi tradition; in this context independent scholars were excluded because they had not received “proper ‘ilm” from “qualified” ulama.

Traditional Wahhabi ‘ilm, therefore, was the fruit of a process of transmission and depended on the number of ijazas—a certificate by which a scholar acknowledges the transmission of his knowledge (or part of it) to one of his pupils, and authorizes him to transmit it further—given by respected Wahhabi scholars. This is the very logic of al-Albani—who, himself, owned very few of these certificates—would challenge by promoting his critical approach. As a matter of fact, according to al-Albani, transmission has no importance whatsoever, because, every hadith being suspect, the fact that it was narrated by a respected scholar cannot guarantee its authenticity. On the contrary, the important process of accumulation—a good scholar of hadith being someone who has memorized a large sum of hadith and, more importantly, the biographies of a large number of transmitters. Thus, the science of hadith can be measured according to the objective criteria unrelated to family, tribe, or regional descent, allowing for a previously absent measure of meritocracy. More importantly, al-Albani claims of being more faithful to the spirit of Wahhabism than ‘Abd al-Wahhab himself made the former’s ideas very popular among Salafi youth.

Religious entrepreneurs

For all these reasons, al-Albani’s ideas would rapidly become a means for Salafi religious entrepreneurs from outside the Wahhabi aristocracy to challenge the existing hierarchy. Al-Albani himself quickly gathered a large following, in Saudi Arabia and beyond. He would soon have to be recognized, despite the initial hostility of the Wahhabi religious establishment, as one of the leading figures in Salafism.

In the mid-1960s, a number of al-Albani’s disciples in Medina founded al-Jamaa al-Salafiyya al-Muhtasiba (The Salafi Group which Commands Good and Forbids Evil), a radical faction of which, led by Juhayman al-’Utaybi, would storm the grand mosque in Mecca in November 1979. Many of the group’s members—and especially its scholars—were either of Bedouin descent or non-Saudi residents, and were thus marginalized in the religious field. Their activism came, in part at least, as a response to their marginalization.⁴ One of the main religious figures of this group—who was “lucky” enough to have been thrown out of the Kingdom in 1978 and therefore did not take part in the 1979—was Muqbil al-Wadi’i, who subsequently re-established himself in his native Yemen and became the country’s most prominent Salafi scholar.

In the late 1980s, some of al-Albani’s pupils, led by Medinan shaykh called Rabi’ al-Madkhali, formed an informal religious network generally referred to as al-Jamiyya (“the Jamis”, named after one of their key members, Muhammad Aman al-Jami). Beyond their focus on hadith, the Jamis became known as emphasizing al-Albani’s calls not to indulge in politics and for denouncing those who did. Again, many of the Jamis were peripheral origin (al-Madkhali was from Jazan, on the Yemeni border, while al-Jami was from Ethiopia) and had therefore been excluded from all leading positions in the religious field. They would finally gain prominence in the early 1990s, when the Saudi government supported them financially and institutionally, in the hope of creating an apolitical ideological counterweight to the Islamist opposition led by the al-Sahwa al-Islamiyya (the Islamic Awakening), an informal religio-political movement which appeared in Saudi Arabia in the 1960s as the result of a hybridization between Wahhabism, on religious issues, and on the ideas of the Muslim Brotherhood, on political issues.⁵

In the 1990s, a few students of al-Albani would go so far as to challenge both the Wahhabi religious aristocracy and al-Albani himself. Following the teachings of an Indian shaykh called Hamza al-Milibari,⁶ they would promote the centrality of hadith, while criticizing al-Albani for relying, in his critique of hadith, on the methods used by late traditionists—at least so they claimed. On the contrary, they would pride themselves for relying exclusively on the methodology of the early traditionists (that is those anterior to al-Dar Qutni (917-995)) and would therefore name their approach manhaj al-mutaqad-dimin (the methodology of the early ones). Again, most of these scholars were peripheral figures, such as Sulayman al-’Alwan, a very young—al-’Alwan was born in 1970 and started to become known as a scholars while he was in his twenties—shaykh of non-tribal descent, and ‘Abdallah al-Sa’d, whose family had come from the city of Zubayr in Modern Iraq. The two of them would later become key figures in the Saudi Jihadi trend, challenging the political order after they had challenged the religious order. As a consequence, they would be arrested and jailed after the May 2003 bombings.

Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani’s denunciation of the “Wahhabi paradox” and his promotion of a new approach to the critique of hadtih as the pillar of religious knowledge have prompted a revolution within Salafism, challenging the very monopoly of the Wahhabi religious aristocracy. As a consequence, al-Albani’s ideas have given independent Salafi religious entrepreneurs a weapon with which to fight their way into previously closed circles. Although none have yet achieved al-Albani’s prestige, some have become recognized scholars. Interestingly enough, al-Albani’s rise to prominence as a de facto part of an establishment he once rejected has encouraged some of disciples, proponents of the “methodology of the early ones,” to call—along al-Albani’s earlier line—for an even “purer” approach to the critique of hadith. As this shows, the revolutionary power of his methods remains intact.

Notes:

1. As opposed to Wahhabism, Salafism refers here to all hybridations that have taken place since the 1960s between the teachings of Muhammad bin ‘Abd al-Wahhab and other Islamic schools of thought. Al-Albani’s discourse can therefore be a form of Salafism, while being critical of Wahhabism.
2. Stéphane Lacroix, “Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani’s Contribution to Contemporary Salafism,” in Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement, ed. Roel Meijer (London/New York: Hurst/Columbia University Press, 2008 (forthcoming)).
3. On the controversies surrounding al-Albani, see ibid.
4. See Thomas Hegghammer and Stéphane Lacroix, “Rejectionist Islamism in Saudi Arabia: The Story of Juhayman al-’Utaybi Revisited,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 39, no. 1 (2007):103-122.
5. For more details, see ibid.
6. The book is called Al-muwazana bayna al-mutaqaddimin wa-l-muta’akhkhirin fi tashih al-ahadith wa ta’liliha [The balance between the early ones and the late ones regarding the identification of authentic and weak hadiths].

Source: International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World – ISIM Review 21, Spring 2008 (exact PDF)

Related posts:

• Living the Light – Imam Nawawi’s 40 Hadith – Sh. Faraz Rabbani
• Provisions for the Seekers: A Two-Day Hadith Intensive – Taught by Mufti Abdur Rahman ibn Yusuf
• A Few Hadith on Dhikr

Shaykh Muhammad Hayyat al-Sindi…

• was a Hanafi.
• was a Sufi in the Naqshabandiyya tariqa via ‘Abd al-Rahmin al-Saqqaf. Also possible affiliation with the Khalwatiyya.
• was born in Pakistan, moved to Madinah and studied there.
• studied under:
  • Abi al-Hasan Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Hadi al-Sindi, ‘Abdallah ibn Salim al-Bagri, Hasan ibn ‘li al-’Ajami, and Abi al-Tahir Muhammad ibn Ibrahim al-Kirini.
  • 2 were Hanafi and 2 were Shafi
  • six lines linking Muhammad Hayyat with al-Qashash
  • Muhammad Hayyat had at least eight lines of connexion with al-Biibili
  • other scholars too, check article.

Shaykh Muhammad Hayyat al-Sindi was the teacher of Shaykh Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab (alleged founder of Wahhabism). He taught Sh. ibn Abdul Wahhab “rejection of popular religious practices associated with ‘ saints ‘ and their tombs”. I guess this shows Sh. Muhammad Hayyat al-Sindi wasn’t an extreme Sufi.

Sh. Muhammad Hayyat had 20 students including Sh. ibn Abdul Wahhab:

• Twelve of them were Hanafi
• Five were Shafi
• One was a “Sufi recluse”
• Two Hanbalis (including Sh. ibn Abdul Wahhab).
• Out of the 20, 12 were directly connected to Sufism
  • 7 identified with major Sufi tariqas
  • 3 taught or wrote Sufi texts
  • 1 was a Sufi miracle worker – the “Sufi recluse
  • 5 of them were Sufi Shaykhs

So in other words, from what I understand in the article, these 20 brothers, scholars, students of knowledge were the classmates of Sh. ibn Abdul Wahhab. Regardless of what the students, followers of Sh. ibn Abdul Wahhab have to say about Sufism, it is clear that his classmates, teachers, friends, brothers, and people who he most likely “hung out” with were madhab-following sufis.

The author of the article is Dr. John Voll. He is a professor of Islamic history and the associate director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. You can find his profile here.

Source

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