Navigating the Boundaries of Culture and Religion
Muslims are diverse and come from many parts of the world where culture varies. How do we reconcile these cultural differences with our religion of Islam. What is accepted and what isn’t? How do we determine this? As Islam spreads to new areas of the world where the cultury differs, how do they assimilate into an Islamic lifestyle?
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00:00I didn't know I was unpopular in some circles. I'm just joking. I think that was probably
00:00:25my destiny to be unpopular in many circles, which is not a problem. I love the topic they
00:00:35gave me because it was so enormous that it forced me to do a lot of work, which is good.
00:00:40These talks make me get off my self and do some research. It's easier to do these things,
00:00:58not because I'm... I don't agree with PowerPoint culture. Everything has to have a PowerPoint.
00:01:04When you're dealing with things that have technical terms, it's sometimes easier if
00:01:07people can see instead of trying to hear odd words or odd names pronounced. I also wanted
00:01:14to say that I really love traveling and meeting people in different mosque communities because
00:01:20it always makes me very optimistic. I think it's not normal to wake up every day and just see
00:01:28people on TV saying how much they hate you and how much they want you out of their country. That's
00:01:32not a normal way to live. I've decided that's not normal. I've decided it's stressful. It's
00:01:36okay to feel stress, recognize that, but even though things seem very difficult and they are
00:01:42difficult for the Muslim community here and around the world, I'm very optimistic because
00:01:45when I meet especially young Muslims, I'm so impressed by them, really, really impressed by
00:01:50them. I'm also very impressed by the older Muslims. People love to make fun of the uncles
00:01:54and the aunties and how they didn't understand this country, the mosques. I don't feel comfortable
00:02:00in the mosques. This is really... I don't think people say that. I don't think really go to mosques.
00:02:04I really don't think they actually go to mosques. I meet uncles and aunties. They might have accents,
00:02:10but they understand this country much better than I do, and they built institutions. They
00:02:15built the institutions in this country that provide the infrastructure for being Muslim,
00:02:18and the more I travel, the more I appreciate that. So, you know, here's to the uncles and
00:02:25aunties out there who don't get enough respect, even though they may get their shipships brought
00:02:32to them occasionally. Okay. So today's talk is about custom, and I want you to think broadly
00:02:47first about this. There are certain societies, certain civilizations, certain views of law
00:02:55that say that people don't need any values to come from above or from revelation or from eternal
00:03:02sources. That, in fact, all you need to govern yourself, all you need to tell you what's right
00:03:07and what's wrong is just your local culture. So, for example, ancient Greece. What was right
00:03:15and what was wrong is basically what people in the city of Athens believed or in the city of Sparta
00:03:21believed. That was the only source of right and wrong. So it's actually Muslims and Christians
00:03:32and Jews are different, at least historically, because they believe that human beings on their
00:03:39own are not able to come up with all the answers about what is right and what is wrong. That the
00:03:46human being is too weak, too feeble mentally and spiritually to know what is right and what is
00:03:55wrong on their own. That they need reminders, they need direction from above, from God, and that
00:04:01comes through revelation. Now, as we'll see, that doesn't mean that local custom is irrelevant.
00:04:07It's very important, but it fills in the spaces. It contours the edges. It doesn't provide the
00:04:16skeleton. It doesn't provide the framework. That comes from revelation. So what happened in
00:04:22beginning, let's just pick a date, around 1700, first in England and then it moved into Western
00:04:29Europe and then into Central Europe and into the colonies of England, the United States and other
00:04:36places, and then the whole world. What happened was something called modernity. This was a
00:04:42transformation of human society in the social, political, religious, economic, technological
00:04:51spheres. Complete transformation of human society. Before, in the year 2000, around the year 2000,
00:04:58over 50% of human beings lived in cities. In the year 2000, we hit the 50% mark. That is the
00:05:07biggest change in human history since human beings settled down, stopped wandering around and
00:05:11gathering nuts and berries and stuff like that, and decided to do agriculture. That's the biggest
00:05:15change. So human society has, since the 1700s, undergone changes that are before the last
00:05:22biggest change was settling down and not being hunter-gatherers. That was the biggest change.
00:05:31Now what happened is that as society changed so rapidly, remember, people living, let's say,
00:05:40from around 1850 to 1950, they experienced change in every year that people 100 years earlier or
00:05:47200 years earlier wouldn't experience in their whole lifetime. What happened was society changed
00:05:56so much that people, many people, not all, maybe not even the majority, but many people,
00:06:03believed that these transcendental rules that had come from Revelation were simply no longer
00:06:09applicable to human society. Human society had moved beyond these rules. And now the only
00:06:14source, even people who had previously been committed to Revelation, like many Christians and
00:06:20many Jews, not all but many, they believe now that human custom, our custom, what we believe
00:06:28is right and wrong in our community, these are in fact the only sources of law that we need,
00:06:34the only sources of morality that we need. Now they enshrine these values in an almost
00:06:41pseudo-religious notions like human rights. So for example, you don't want to be at a dinner party
00:06:47or a cocktail party and say, I don't care about human rights. You do that, you're not going to be
00:06:52popular. Because that's the new source of absolute values is human rights. You don't want to be
00:06:58going out against human rights. But human rights are something that human beings created in the
00:07:0420th century, in effect. They had their angel seasons before that, but in effect in the 20th century.
00:07:10But what I'm trying to say is that for most people living in the West today, I would say most,
00:07:19our customs are the only source of morality for us. If we decide that gay marriage is fine,
00:07:27gay marriage is fine. If we decide 10 years later that gay marriage is not fine, gay marriage is not
00:07:33fine. If we decide that incest is fine in 20 years, incest will be fine. There's no controlling,
00:07:39external control on this. And I'm not, I don't want to say, just assume that that's bad. I mean,
00:07:45I think that's bad as a Muslim. But I mean, I'm not trying to judge here. I'm just trying to lay out
00:07:51the setting for this discussion. Okay. How much longer until we have to stop?
00:07:57Five minutes. Okay. So, I forgot my piece of paper in my bag. I'll try and do it from memory.
00:08:06So, what is orfanada? These are two important terms in Islamic law. Now that I've given myself
00:08:12the challenge, I'm still going to try and do this from memory. But I have the backup. Okay.
00:08:18These are two important terms. Sometimes they're in it, Muslim scholars will use them interchangeably.
00:08:24But they're very different in their basic meanings. Okay. We read the Quran all the time
00:08:30and the Quran talks about al-amr bil ma'ruf. Do something bil ma'ruf.
00:08:36Right. For example, for marriage and divorce, the Quran says
00:08:42imsakun bil ma'ruf aw tasrihun bil ihsan.
00:08:48imsakun bil ma'ruf aw tasrihun bil ihsan.
00:08:54Either talking to men. There's several different kinds of ways to end a marriage in Islam. There's talaq, which the man does.
00:09:00There's khula, which the woman does. There's tafriq, which the judge does. Which, by the way, is the best way if you want to
00:09:06minimize your divorce payments of either party. Do tafriq. That's my analysis.
00:09:12But what does the Quran say? For men, if men are going to divorce their wives
00:09:18or talaq, it says either keep them, keep your wives by what's ma'ruf
00:09:24or send them away bil ihsan, in a goodly way, with goodly conduct or with
00:09:30good intentions. What is this ma'ruf? What does ma'ruf mean?
00:09:36Ma'ruf comes from the root urf or arafah, which means to know something. Something is known.
00:09:42Something is known. And if any of you are so bad that you watch Game of Thrones,
00:09:48which is a really, really bad TV show. But in the first season,
00:09:54I heard, there's this people called the Dothraki, and they're always saying it is known.
00:10:00That's the way they say this. That's the exact same meaning in Arabic.
00:10:06Something is known, it means it's right. What we know to be true is what is correct.
00:10:12What we know to be right is what is correct. So urf is what the custom of a people is.
00:10:18And what is ma'ruf is what is defined by that urf, and it is what is known to be correct.
00:10:24And so it's a very interesting concept because it's almost, by definition, relative in a sense.
00:10:30So the famous 9th century grammarian, Zajaj, says
00:10:36ma'ruf is what is considered to be goodly from actions.
00:10:44What actions are considered to be goodly? And in another,
00:10:50the famous Tafsir scholar and jurist, Al-Qurtubi, from the 13th century of the Common Era,
00:10:56he said that, he defined ma'ruf as
00:11:02what is known that it is truth. What is known that it is correct.
00:11:08And in another discussion, he says it's
00:11:14giving people, making sure that people get their rights.
00:11:20So what is ma'ruf, what is known to be correct, is what is the truth,
00:11:26and what guarantees that people get their rights.
00:11:32So this is then the concept of urf. It's custom, and it's what custom deems to be correct.
00:11:38So this is kind of, what custom? Is it the custom of the people of Boston?
00:11:44Is it the custom of the people of Medina? It depends.
00:11:50And this is where you see that there's ambiguity in this issue, and we'll discuss that more.
00:11:56The second thing is what's called a'dah. A'dah means what's normal,
00:12:02or what happens normally. So when you go to people in Egypt, and you say,
00:12:08how have you been doing this last week, or something,
00:12:14say a'dah. Normal. Things are going normal.
00:12:20A'dah is, it's what you're used to. It's a normal course of affairs.
00:12:26This is very important in Islamic law and Islamic theology,
00:12:32because Muslims believe in miracles.
00:12:38So God could, if God wanted, God is all powerful. If God wanted, God could turn me into, right now,
00:12:44a talking turkey that would give a lesson. This is entirely possible.
00:12:50God could make my student coming to class, God could take that student,
00:12:56transport him to Mecca, so he could do his prayers in Mecca, and then return him
00:13:02five minutes late to my class. That's entirely possible. As a Muslim, I believe that's entirely possible.
00:13:08It's possible, but it's not a'dah. And when it comes to law, and when it comes to
00:13:14obligations to one another, we go by a'dah, not by what is rationally possible.
00:13:20This is a very important point. So, for example,
00:13:26this is one famous scholar, an Egyptian scholar named al-Bujayrimi, who died in the early 1800s.
00:13:32He's discussing, what if someone says, I'm going to divorce, he says to his wife,
00:13:38I will divorce you the next time you have your period. And then she never gets her period again,
00:13:44even though she's only 20 years old.
00:13:50What would happen? That is possible. It's medically possible, maybe.
00:13:56God could prevent this woman from ever having her period again. But in this case, he says, you go by what's a'dah.
00:14:02You go by what generally happens. What are the general rules of nature? What are the general rules of society?
00:14:08Because, he says, Bujayrimi says, if someone,
00:14:14it's not possible by a'dah that a woman just stops having her period.
00:14:20It could happen, but it's not a'dah. And in law, we go by a'dah.
00:14:27By the way, this might sound weird, but this is exactly how American law works.
00:14:33You could say, you know, I, yeah, I know that,
00:14:39you know, I know the IRS sent me 10 letters, and I know that they called my house
00:14:45a hundred times. All those letters got lost, and somehow the answering machine deleted every single one of those messages.
00:14:52It's possible, but it's not a'dah. And a'dah is what the judge is going to, or what the
00:14:58IRS official is going to rule by. So this is actually very common in legal systems.
00:15:04You can't always take exceptional situations. You have to go by what generally happens.
00:15:10I know. One second. Let me finish this slide, and then we'll finish.
00:15:17They both have an impact on Islamic law, Islamic ethics.
00:15:23But a'dah is much more about the relationship that people have to God's power.
00:15:29God's all-powerful. Yes, it's possible that God could, let's say,
00:15:35another example is, let's say somebody dies, and they come back to life.
00:15:42Does that person get all their property back, even after their inheritance has been given away?
00:15:48Do they get remarried to their wife, even though that marriage has ended when the person dies?
00:15:54It's possible that God can resurrect the dead, but it's not a'dah. And in law, you go with a'dah.
00:16:00You don't go with what those extreme situations that are technically, rationally possible, but don't really actually happen.
00:16:06Okay. So after this, we're going to talk about the big issue, which is,
00:16:12which everyone thinks about when we talk about urf, which is, the sharia really always says this,
00:16:18but we're not going to do this because of urf. So urf as a way of getting out of what would normally be the law.
00:16:26Because this is really how people talk about urf today. They say, you know, normally Muslims, these are the rules we follow.
00:16:32But because that's not the way people live here, we're going to change the law.
00:16:36We're going to see, we're going to talk about when that's possible, under what circumstances it's possible, and when it's abused.
00:16:46So I think it's also important to, I want to note something, which is that there is nothing more powerful in our lives,
00:16:58I mean, not in terms of, obviously God is the most powerful, but in terms of forces in our everyday life,
00:17:03there's nothing that we feel to be more powerful than culture.
00:17:08People tend to poo-poo culture, but this is a famous Greek poet in the 5th century BC, a poet named Pindar.
00:17:16He said a very beautiful verse of poetry. He said, custom is the king of all. Custom is the king of everything.
00:17:25And always, I want you to keep this example in mind. If I brought you a plate of dog meat, would you eat it?
00:17:34No. In fact, you'd probably throw up.
00:17:38If you brought any American a plate of dog meat, they'd probably throw up.
00:17:43If you go to countries like China, they serve dog meat in restaurants.
00:17:48So, something that you feel is so disgusting that it must be morally wrong, because you feel it so deeply in your soul.
00:17:57It must be morally wrong.
00:17:59There's another human being who is just as smart as you, just as moral as you on the other side of the world.
00:18:03He thinks there's absolutely nothing wrong with eating that.
00:18:07So those things, even those things that we think are the most disgusting, the most unacceptable things,
00:18:12other people, for very good reasons, have no problem with them.
00:18:17So even deep disgust is actually culturally conditioned. It is culturally conditioned.
00:18:24That's a very important thing to keep in mind.
00:18:27Because a lot of times, you'll hear people say, that's just horrible. I don't even need to describe how horrible it is.
00:18:33I don't even need to justify why I think that.
00:18:36Just because someone feels something is wrong, that doesn't mean it's wrong.
00:18:40That's not evidence. That's not proof.
00:18:42It might just be the way their culture thinks of something.
00:18:45That's an important thing to keep in mind.
00:18:47Custom is extreme.
00:18:49What do the Kufar in Mecca, the unbelievers in Mecca, what do they say to the Prophet,
00:18:53like I said, over and over again?
00:18:56We didn't find our forefathers doing this.
00:18:59This is not what our culture says.
00:19:01That was their main defense.
00:19:03This is not the way we do things here.
00:19:08Why do Americans wear shoes inside?
00:19:11It's such a stupid, I mean, it's really a stupid way to live, right?
00:19:14I mean, you go outside, you walk in dirt, you walk in dog poop, and you walk into your house.
00:19:18It doesn't make any sense. You have to pay for carpet cleaning so often.
00:19:21It's much more reasonable to not wear your shoes inside.
00:19:23But people are attached to this. This is the way they do things.
00:19:26And they don't like people telling them to change their...
00:19:29They don't like being told to change the way they do things.
00:19:31It's a very important principle.
00:19:33Culture is extremely powerful.
00:19:36So, I mentioned before that when we talk about urf,
00:19:40I think this is one of those times when it's really useful to just get down to brass tacks.
00:19:46What are we really talking about?
00:19:48If you're a Muslim who likes to talk about issues of Islam and the Sharia,
00:19:52you've all had this discussion.
00:19:55Here's the way the discussion goes.
00:19:57Yes, the Sharia generally says X.
00:20:00Or yes, this is usually haram.
00:20:02Yes, this is usually required.
00:20:04But we're not going to do that.
00:20:06We are going to do this because of our urf.
00:20:08Because our urf changes things.
00:20:12Is that a valid explanation?
00:20:15The answer is, sometimes, and sometimes not.
00:20:19It's a very complicated...
00:20:21The role of urf in how Muslims decide what is right and wrong,
00:20:26what is pleasing or displeasing to God is very complicated.
00:20:28So, I'll try my best, according to how I understand it, to explain it.
00:20:33So, urf is, in effect, it shapes...
00:20:38I think this is very important. I think it's useful.
00:20:41It shapes the contact surfaces of the law.
00:20:45And here, the law, I mean the Sharia.
00:20:47It shapes the contact surfaces.
00:20:50So, the Sharia has principles.
00:20:52It has general rules.
00:20:54But where those general rules turn into details,
00:20:57where those general rules come into impact with our lives,
00:21:01where those details shape our everyday interactions,
00:21:04that's where urf comes.
00:21:06And it shapes those contact surfaces
00:21:10to make the law fit into our lives, into our time, into our place.
00:21:16It doesn't mean you abandon those principles.
00:21:19It means it's actually...
00:21:21Urf allows those principles to rest comfortably in a society.
00:21:27And here, we always have to remember
00:21:29that there's two types of rulings in Islamic law.
00:21:33Two categories.
00:21:35One is the thawabit.
00:21:37Things that don't change.
00:21:39Alcohol is haram.
00:21:41It's always going to be haram.
00:21:43Unless you're dying of thirst in the middle of the desert,
00:21:47and you come across a six-pack of beer,
00:21:50then you can drink it.
00:21:51And then there's even debate about how much you can drink.
00:21:53Can you just drink enough to survive, or can you drink the whole six-pack?
00:21:57I'm not sure.
00:21:59Right?
00:22:00But it's still haram.
00:22:02Alcohol is still haram.
00:22:04It's just a necessity.
00:22:06So it doesn't matter if you're on a college campus
00:22:10where every night, every single person goes out and gets drunk
00:22:13until they can't see.
00:22:15That doesn't matter. It's still haram.
00:22:17Even if everyone in the society every night drinks alcohol with their meal,
00:22:20it's still haram.
00:22:22These things don't change.
00:22:24Certain things do change.
00:22:26A lot of the laws of marriage,
00:22:29what a husband owes his wife,
00:22:31what a wife owes her husband,
00:22:33what their jobs are in the house,
00:22:35these are almost all shaped by urf.
00:22:37How much mahr you pay.
00:22:39This is all shaped by urf.
00:22:45It's very interesting that
00:22:47something being from the thawabit or from the mutaghayrat,
00:22:51the mutaghayrat are the ones that don't change,
00:22:53the second category, I think I actually forgot to mention that,
00:22:55so the thawabit, which are the rulings that never change,
00:22:58and then the mutaghayrat, the rulings that do change.
00:23:03Sometimes you find, for example,
00:23:05things that are from the thawabit
00:23:08that might not even be clearly mentioned in the Quran.
00:23:11So, for example,
00:23:13a man cannot have more than four wives.
00:23:18Does anyone disagree with that?
00:23:20No. Okay.
00:23:21The prophet, alayhis salam, had more than four wives.
00:23:24But as far as I know, there's no Quranic verse that says
00:23:28the prophet can have more than four wives, but no one else can.
00:23:32This is actually unstated explicitly,
00:23:35but everybody knew it.
00:23:37And Muslim scholars have known it since the very beginning
00:23:40and no one ever questioned it.
00:23:42So it's not really explicitly stated,
00:23:44but it's so clearly understood that it has never been questioned.
00:23:47This is never something that can change.
00:23:49There's never a situation in which it's halal
00:23:51for a man to have more than four wives,
00:23:53except for the prophet, alayhis salam.
00:23:57There's other things that are mentioned in the Quran very clearly
00:24:00that might be mutaghayrat.
00:24:04So, for example,
00:24:06the different types of people who are eligible to get zakat.
00:24:11There's eight different groups.
00:24:13And one of those groups, as the Quran mentions,
00:24:15al-muallafa qulubuhum,
00:24:17those people who,
00:24:19originally it's the Meccan elite,
00:24:21the elite of Mecca and of Ta'if,
00:24:23they convert to Islam, even though they lost all their money,
00:24:25all their property,
00:24:27and the prophet, alayhis salam, gave them back
00:24:29from the squares of war, from the zakat money,
00:24:31to make them loyal Muslims.
00:24:33And in fact, people like
00:24:35Muawiyah,
00:24:37Ahmed ibn al-Aas,
00:24:39very loyal Muslims after that.
00:24:41It was a very smart, strategic decision.
00:24:43For example, in the Hanafi school of law,
00:24:45that category doesn't exist anymore.
00:24:48The Hanafi say,
00:24:50this only applied to the time of the prophet.
00:24:52After that, there is no more
00:24:54people who can be
00:24:56muallafa qulubuhum.
00:24:58So, even though it's stated in the Quran,
00:25:00the Hanafi school said, no, no,
00:25:02this category was only during the time of the prophet.
00:25:04The other schools of law say, no, no,
00:25:06this category still exists today.
00:25:08So, for example,
00:25:10I'm teaching this class on Islam in Southeast Asia,
00:25:12so I've been reading all about Malaysia and Indonesia.
00:25:15But in Malaysia,
00:25:17when a Muslim says, I don't like being Muslim anymore,
00:25:19I want to leave Islam,
00:25:21oftentimes,
00:25:23the government
00:25:25or an organization will help them out financially
00:25:29to try and ease their situation.
00:25:31Because maybe they're actually suffering socially or economically.
00:25:33And giving them help with a business or something
00:25:35will actually ease their heart.
00:25:37So, this category still exists
00:25:39for all the other schools,
00:25:41except for the Hanafi school. It still exists.
00:25:43And oftentimes, just because something is mentioned in the Quran
00:25:45doesn't necessarily mean it's from the thawabit.
00:25:49Or just because something is not mentioned explicitly
00:25:51doesn't necessarily mean it's from the mutaghayrat.
00:25:53It might be a permanent ruling.
00:25:57But let's look at how order functions as a license.
00:25:59Here, I mean, a license means
00:26:01something that is going to change
00:26:05the ruling of the sharia ruling.
00:26:07Or shape the sharia ruling.
00:26:09So, I wanted to
00:26:11make these things appear and disappear
00:26:13with buttons, but I didn't have enough time.
00:26:15Because I have two kids,
00:26:17I call them,
00:26:19you're not going to have enough time,
00:26:21and you better stay up late tonight.
00:26:23Because that's what I have to do
00:26:25in order to get anything done.
00:26:27And I failed to do that, so sorry.
00:26:29I'll just have to point at them with the cursor.
00:26:31Sometimes the Quran
00:26:33or the Sunnah of the Prophet
00:26:35in his hadith,
00:26:37you actually have direct commands
00:26:39to do what is ma'roof.
00:26:41So, for example,
00:26:43as I mentioned before,
00:26:45in marriage and divorce,
00:26:51either keep your wife
00:26:53according to what's ma'roof,
00:26:55or divorce your wife in a goodly way.
00:26:57This is the command to men.
00:26:59Women have their own rules
00:27:01for dealing with divorce.
00:27:03But we'll stick with men because it uses the word ma'roof.
00:27:05This means,
00:27:07actually,
00:27:09that
00:27:11most of the details
00:27:13of marriage and divorce
00:27:15are going to come from
00:27:17what is ma'roof in a specific time
00:27:19in a specific place.
00:27:21So, in America, for example,
00:27:23we might say that
00:27:25wives expect their husbands
00:27:27to help out with dishes,
00:27:29to cook some of the time,
00:27:31to clean up,
00:27:33to help out with kids.
00:27:35There might be other societies where that's not expected of men.
00:27:37American husbands
00:27:39might expect their wives to do
00:27:41this, do that, and the other.
00:27:43And other societies might not have these expectations.
00:27:45So a couple in America
00:27:47might end up getting divorced
00:27:49because they're not living up to their expectations
00:27:51of each other.
00:27:53And that's entirely justified.
00:27:55That's entirely justified in Islam
00:27:57because a lot of these expectations are
00:27:59we're told we're supposed to follow
00:28:01ma'roof in our time, in our place.
00:28:03Things like mahr, the amount of your mahr you pay.
00:28:05When you pay your mahr.
00:28:07Originally, Muslims didn't
00:28:09do this thing where they paid a little bit
00:28:11up front and then a lot
00:28:13if you divorce your wife.
00:28:15You paid everything up front.
00:28:17This muwakhar mahr only started in the
00:28:19couple of centuries after the time of the
00:28:21Prophet, peace be upon him, as far as I know
00:28:23from the evidence I've seen.
00:28:25And then it became very common. And now,
00:28:27you have relatively small
00:28:29up front mahr and big, big, big
00:28:31back end mahr to prevent you
00:28:33from just divorcing
00:28:35your wife without any concern for
00:28:37your financial well-being.
00:28:39So these things are all allowed
00:28:41because these are based on our culture.
00:28:43Now, notice
00:28:45I have my arrows there.
00:28:47Just
00:28:49because God tells us
00:28:51and the Prophet tells us to follow what's ma'roof
00:28:53doesn't mean you're allowed to follow what's
00:28:55ma'roof even though it contradicts
00:28:57clear evidence from the Quran
00:28:59and the Sunnah. It can't contradict those
00:29:01tawabbits, those unchanging rules.
00:29:03So, for example,
00:29:05it's ma'roof
00:29:07to drink alcohol
00:29:09in the United States, but that can
00:29:11never make it okay for Muslims to drink alcohol
00:29:13in the United States.
00:29:15It's ma'roof for
00:29:17let's say it becomes
00:29:19ma'roof for
00:29:21men and men to get
00:29:23married or men and women to get married.
00:29:25And that's legal in the country.
00:29:27It's not, in my
00:29:29opinion, it can never be ma'roof in Islamic
00:29:31law, in the Sharia, because in the
00:29:33Sharia, marriage has to be a contract
00:29:35between a man and a woman.
00:29:37Or a man and a woman, basically.
00:29:39So just because you have
00:29:41changes in culture doesn't
00:29:43mean that those changes allow
00:29:45you to cross
00:29:47red lines.
00:29:49Those tawabbits, those unchanging
00:29:51rules of the Sharia.
00:29:53Then, a lot
00:29:55of times, you have in the Qur'an,
00:29:57in the Sunnah of the Prophet, implicit
00:29:59commands to do what's
00:30:01ma'roof.
00:30:03To do what's ma'roof.
00:30:07For example,
00:30:09our contracts with each other. The Qur'an
00:30:11says, O you who believe,
00:30:13fulfill your contracts.
00:30:17Fulfill your covenants
00:30:19that you make.
00:30:21This is a principle
00:30:23that the Qur'an sets up for us.
00:30:25Now, what type of
00:30:27contract we can have
00:30:29is really, in
00:30:31almost all the schools of law in Islam,
00:30:33is set by Urf.
00:30:35It's set by Urf.
00:30:37So, for example, if
00:30:39I go to
00:30:41the tailor,
00:30:43and I say,
00:30:45I want you to
00:30:47make my, I'm getting fat,
00:30:49so I want you to
00:30:51loosen my pants.
00:30:53And he says, okay, that's fine.
00:30:55I
00:30:57generally understand, he's not going to
00:30:59charge me a million dollars.
00:31:01If he comes back and he says, that was a million dollars,
00:31:03I'm going to say, I'm not paying that, I'm sorry.
00:31:05He says, but I did what you asked.
00:31:07I said, yeah, we know this is not going to be that much money.
00:31:09If you go to a restaurant, and you order
00:31:11a steak, and the bill comes, and it's
00:31:13$20,000,
00:31:15you don't have to pay that, because
00:31:17why didn't you look at the menu?
00:31:19You should have looked at the menu, buyer beware.
00:31:21No. In American law,
00:31:23that's not true. You can say, look,
00:31:25generally, we know steak isn't going to be
00:31:27$20,000. But even if I didn't
00:31:29look at the menu. So a lot of
00:31:31in American law, and in Sharia,
00:31:33what kind of
00:31:35things you can stipulate in a contract,
00:31:37the things you can expect,
00:31:39these things are dictated by Urf.
00:31:41There's certain things that you can't do,
00:31:43because you can't cross the red lines of the Sharia.
00:31:45So if I say,
00:31:47I will
00:31:53give you this money, provided
00:31:55you pay me back in a year, with 20%
00:31:57interest. That's not allowed.
00:31:59Because you can't have
00:32:01interest-bearing transactions in Sharia.
00:32:03If you say,
00:32:05I want to buy
00:32:07this giant jug of
00:32:09alcohol, and in return
00:32:11I'll do this for you. You can't do that, because you're not allowed
00:32:13to buy alcohol.
00:32:15These things, again, you can't cross the red lines
00:32:17of the Sharia.
00:32:19Even things like,
00:32:21oh, this is interesting,
00:32:23liability. I love reading these cases
00:32:25in Islamic law. It's very interesting.
00:32:27Like, let's say, I'm a
00:32:29shop owner, and I
00:32:31say, I'm going to go pray. And I go and pray,
00:32:33and somebody comes and
00:32:35steals things from my store.
00:32:37Is the
00:32:39neighboring shop owner
00:32:41liable?
00:32:43In some places, it might be
00:32:45the custom that shop owners look
00:32:47out for each other's stuff.
00:32:49In that case, the other person might be liable
00:32:51for those things that were stolen. He was supposed to look out,
00:32:53or she was supposed to look out for that stuff.
00:32:55But, in some places,
00:32:57it's like,
00:32:59hey, it's not my shop.
00:33:01It's your job to take care of this stuff.
00:33:03So this is, because I
00:33:05fly a lot, I have access
00:33:07to the lounge, the
00:33:09nighted lounge, which, by the way, is more
00:33:11crowded than a normal airport. So a lot of times,
00:33:13I just go into the regular part of the airport. It's easier.
00:33:15But, I've noticed this.
00:33:17In the lounge, people,
00:33:19they leave their stuff.
00:33:21The orf of the business class lounge is,
00:33:23you can leave your computer, you can leave your phone.
00:33:25It doesn't matter. It's like
00:33:27some kind of orf in there that people don't take
00:33:29each other's stuff. The regular part of the airport,
00:33:31I wouldn't do that. In fact, I don't
00:33:33do it in the business lounge either, because
00:33:35I'm paranoid.
00:33:37Dress, even things like
00:33:39dress. So the aura,
00:33:41for example, what a man's aura is,
00:33:43their navel to their knees.
00:33:45This is known from
00:33:47the commands of the
00:33:49Prophet, peace be upon him, his descriptions from
00:33:51Hadiths.
00:33:53But, that means, in theory,
00:33:55I could come tonight and give this
00:33:57lecture, wearing a really
00:33:59long pair of, you know, Bermuda
00:34:01shorts or something like that, that happen
00:34:03to go up to my navel. Would you be okay
00:34:05with that?
00:34:09No? Okay, I'm kind of
00:34:11offended, but no,
00:34:13you wouldn't be okay with that, because that would be
00:34:15ridiculous. But in
00:34:17theory, I'm not, hey, this is
00:34:19my, I'm covering my aura. Why are you complaining?
00:34:21I'm doing what's required of me in Islamic law.
00:34:23Because we have notions
00:34:25of propriety that go beyond
00:34:27what's your aura, just your aura.
00:34:29But that can change.
00:34:31So, for example, you might
00:34:33be in a place where it's
00:34:35totally okay for men to walk around.
00:34:37I mean, again, go
00:34:39to Malaysia. In
00:34:41Malacca, in what's now
00:34:43Peninsular Malaysia, and in Aceh,
00:34:45in the 1500s and the 1600s,
00:34:47after people had become Muslim there,
00:34:49the European travelers, the way they
00:34:51described the Muslims there, is the men would walk
00:34:53around, they have a sarong, right, so
00:34:55they have their, kind of, their calves
00:34:57to their navel covered. And they might have, like,
00:34:59a piece of cloth over their shoulders, but they were
00:35:01basically not wearing a shirt.
00:35:03And that was their urf.
00:35:05Their aura was covered.
00:35:07But other
00:35:09places, like the United States, that would not
00:35:11be okay, unless you live in California,
00:35:13in which case, probably it's okay.
00:35:15So,
00:35:17even things like dress,
00:35:19the details,
00:35:21beyond what's required,
00:35:23beyond those laws that don't change, the
00:35:25details are shaped by urf.
00:35:27But you can't, again, you can't allow
00:35:29that to go outside the boundary of the sharia.
00:35:31Now, the,
00:35:33over here,
00:35:35this is the second
00:35:37type of function of urf. So,
00:35:39we just looked at, sometimes,
00:35:41the Quran and the sunnah tells you,
00:35:43do what's ma'ruf.
00:35:45Or, it's,
00:35:47it gives you laws,
00:35:49it gives you principles, like contracts,
00:35:51dress, and then
00:35:53the details, and the additional material
00:35:55is filled in by urf.
00:35:57But,
00:35:59another major function of urf, is that
00:36:01it,
00:36:03it works with
00:36:05the principle in Islamic law, which is
00:36:07that, ad-darar yuzal,
00:36:09or raf al-haraj.
00:36:11Darar yuzal means harm
00:36:13should be removed.
00:36:15Awal mashqa tajlibu tayseer.
00:36:17Hardship,
00:36:19or difficulty, should,
00:36:21you should bring ease
00:36:23to remove hardship.
00:36:25Or, raf al-haraj, removal of
00:36:27hardship. These are principles that Muslim
00:36:29scholars follow. As much as
00:36:31possible, Muslim judges
00:36:33and muftis will try to remove
00:36:35hardship from people.
00:36:37And so, a lot of times,
00:36:39this is
00:36:41strongly informed by urf,
00:36:43because urf,
00:36:45it gives you
00:36:47the actual functioning of society.
00:36:49What are the rules that people follow in society?
00:36:51What's expected of them? What are their customs?
00:36:53How much
00:36:55can you work with the
00:36:57details of the sharia to
00:36:59accommodate those customs?
00:37:01Because you don't want to cause people
00:37:03difficulty.
00:37:05You don't want Muslims to
00:37:07have to walk around
00:37:09looking a way that's going to make them stand out
00:37:11so much that people hate them, or something like that.
00:37:13You don't want to have, you know,
00:37:15if you live in a society where wearing
00:37:17a white hat
00:37:19is extremely offensive. It's the most
00:37:21insulting thing you can do.
00:37:23Maybe in that society, you shouldn't wear a white hat.
00:37:25You should wear another color hat. Because why?
00:37:27You're causing Muslims problems
00:37:29by putting them in danger in this situation.
00:37:31Okay.
00:37:33So, how does it, what kind of
00:37:35what kind of actions
00:37:37can Muslim scholars as judges or as
00:37:39muftis take to accommodate
00:37:41urf?
00:37:43In level of
00:37:45starting from the least serious
00:37:47or the lowest in degree
00:37:49would be, they can
00:37:51leave the mashhoor.
00:37:53Now, people sometimes say, ooh, the Shafis
00:37:55say this. The Malikis say that.
00:37:57The Hanafis say this. The Hanbalis say that.
00:37:59Guess what? Your conversation
00:38:01is not complicated enough.
00:38:03Because Shafis don't just say one thing.
00:38:05Malikis don't just say one thing.
00:38:07In every school of law,
00:38:09on almost every issue, there is more
00:38:11than one opinion.
00:38:13So,
00:38:15in that way, Islamic law, it's like American law, right?
00:38:17It depends
00:38:19what state you're in. It depends what
00:38:21jurisdiction you're in. The law in Boston
00:38:23might be different from the law in Delaware.
00:38:25It might be different from the law in Maryland.
00:38:27There's a lot of diversity in the Islamic legal tradition.
00:38:29A lot of diversity.
00:38:31Because Muslim scholars are always trying to
00:38:33they're looking at the Quran.
00:38:35They're trying to understand. They're looking at the Hadiths.
00:38:37They're trying to understand them, how they interact with the Quran.
00:38:39Looking at the Sunnah of the Prophet.
00:38:41They might disagree about which
00:38:43Hadiths are authentic, which Hadiths are inauthentic.
00:38:45They might disagree on
00:38:47which Quranic verse is a general rule,
00:38:49which is a specific rule, which Hadith
00:38:51is abrogated by which other Hadith.
00:38:53Because there's so many steps
00:38:55in interpretation, you have a lot of
00:38:57tremendous diversity
00:38:59in the Islamic legal tradition.
00:39:01And as a scholarly saying goes,
00:39:03the Ikhtilaf of the Ummah
00:39:05is Rahmah. The Ikhtilaf of the Ummah,
00:39:07the difference, disagreement
00:39:09in the Ummah is a source of mercy.
00:39:11Because what it means is that you can actually
00:39:13accommodate Urf a lot of the time.
00:39:15So, one thing you can do is
00:39:17you can leave the main, the Mashhoor,
00:39:19this is in the Maliki
00:39:21school, in the Maliki school they call it the
00:39:23Mashhoor, in the Hanafi school they call it
00:39:25Zahir al-Rawaya, in the Shafi'i school they call it
00:39:27the Mu'tamid. It's the main opinion of
00:39:29the school of law.
00:39:31So you can leave the main opinion and go to another
00:39:33opinion in the school of law, if that's
00:39:35going to accord with the Urf.
00:39:37So, here I have examples
00:39:39from classical times
00:39:41and here I have modern examples.
00:39:43For example, face covering.
00:39:47Should Muslim
00:39:49men look at
00:39:51women's faces?
00:39:53And again, it seems weird in the
00:39:55United States because they're always looking at people's faces.
00:39:57But if you were living in, let's say,
00:39:59Bukhara in the 1000s,
00:40:01especially if you were
00:40:03a wealthy person,
00:40:05a man would not look at
00:40:07unrelated women's
00:40:09faces and he would not want any man
00:40:11looking at his wife's or daughter's
00:40:13faces. But
00:40:15if you're in a society where
00:40:17it's normal for people to
00:40:19walk around with their faces uncovered,
00:40:21then the
00:40:23Zahir al-Rawaya opinion
00:40:25in the Hanafi school
00:40:27and the Shafi'i school is that
00:40:29women should cover their faces.
00:40:31But if that's not the
00:40:33Urf in that area, they'll go away from
00:40:35the main opinion of their school of law
00:40:37to another opinion which says it's not required.
00:40:41Something called istisna.
00:40:43Istisna means,
00:40:45this is very important to us because we're always buying stuff online
00:40:47today, this is like factory
00:40:49ordering, making things to order.
00:40:51The general principle as stated by the Prophet
00:40:53in a hadith in
00:40:55Sunan of Abu Dawud is
00:40:59do not sell what you don't have.
00:41:01The general principle
00:41:03is you can't buy and sell things that
00:41:05don't exist, you can't buy and sell things
00:41:07that you don't have or the other person doesn't have.
00:41:09So if you order,
00:41:11let's say I order
00:41:13a shirt, you can order custom
00:41:15shirts online, I order that.
00:41:17And I pay with my credit card and it takes my money.
00:41:19That shirt doesn't exist yet.
00:41:21I should not, that's technically
00:41:23haram, according
00:41:25to the general principle.
00:41:27But because in our society
00:41:31this is
00:41:33a known
00:41:35activity.
00:41:37For example, if I don't get the shirt that I like,
00:41:39I can get my money back.
00:41:41There's full accountability.
00:41:43The company is probably even going to give me the shirt
00:41:45for free. We know that we can get
00:41:47our money back if we don't get what we want. This is part of our
00:41:49urf.
00:41:51So this becomes an exception to that general rule.
00:41:53And by the way,
00:41:55you can't just have things be exceptions
00:41:57just because you feel like it.
00:41:59When you see cases
00:42:01where there's a general rule, like don't sell
00:42:03what doesn't exist, don't buy and sell things that don't
00:42:05exist, the prophet
00:42:07has already, alayhis salam, he already
00:42:09made an exception.
00:42:11So for example, the prophet, alayhis salam,
00:42:13gave the permission for
00:42:15what's called bay'al araya.
00:42:17If you're a really poor
00:42:19farmer, you can
00:42:21sell your date harvest
00:42:23on your date trees, even before
00:42:25they're ripe. Normally,
00:42:27you couldn't do that because you're buying something that doesn't exist yet.
00:42:29You're selling something that doesn't exist yet.
00:42:31But you have to do this because
00:42:33I don't have any money until
00:42:35these dates are ripe. I can't feed
00:42:37my family until my dates are
00:42:39ripe. So I can sell people a
00:42:41portion of my date harvest
00:42:43now
00:42:45to survive.
00:42:47So this becomes an important exception.
00:42:49So you never, in my
00:42:51opinion, from what I've seen, you'll never
00:42:53find a situation where Muslim scholars
00:42:55will make an exception to a clear rule
00:42:57unless the prophet, alayhis salam,
00:42:59already made an exception and kind of
00:43:01opened that door, created a precedent
00:43:03for things like factory ordering.
00:43:07And another
00:43:09issue, having an
00:43:11imam that's paid,
00:43:13which is wonderful.
00:43:15In the Hanafi school,
00:43:17the Hanafi scholars, they came up with a
00:43:19rule, which is you can't get paid
00:43:21to do ibadah.
00:43:23This is in the Hanafi school. It's not
00:43:25a Quranic verse
00:43:27or this is the principle of the Hanafi school they came
00:43:29up with. But they
00:43:31made exceptions for this
00:43:33based on urf because in some
00:43:35places,
00:43:37you know, it was interesting.
00:43:39If you came to the U.S. in the 1980s
00:43:41probably, a lot of the mosques,
00:43:43there was no paid imam.
00:43:45The imam was just
00:43:47so-and-so or uncle so-and-so.
00:43:49The guy who, you know, comes
00:43:51and gives it. But now there's more
00:43:53mosques. There's more Muslims. Muslims
00:43:55have questions that
00:43:57normal uncles and aunties can't answer.
00:43:59So we need to have scholars that
00:44:01we pay.
00:44:03We need this to survive.
00:44:05So in the
00:44:07Hanafi school of law and all the other schools of law,
00:44:09allow you to have someone who is paid
00:44:11to be the imam of the mosque because
00:44:13otherwise, Muslims would not survive
00:44:15as a community.
00:44:17This is part of their urf.
00:44:19Okay.
00:44:21An example of this today
00:44:23in Southeast Asia
00:44:25and a country like Malaysia,
00:44:27everybody in Malaysia is Shafi, follows the Shafi school.
00:44:29National law
00:44:31says Shafi school of law
00:44:33is the law for Muslims
00:44:35in this country. Their marriage,
00:44:37their divorce, their inheritance,
00:44:39everything is from the Shafi school of law.
00:44:41The Shafi school of law main opinion
00:44:43is women have to cover their face.
00:44:45But if you go to Malaysia, you will
00:44:47see very, very few women covering their face.
00:44:49Why? Because
00:44:51that's not the urf for the people of Southeast Asia.
00:44:53That's not the urf.
00:44:55In fact,
00:44:57a lot of times you'll see
00:44:59women wearing hijab with short
00:45:01sleeve shirt. Very common
00:45:03to see this in Malaysia.
00:45:05And this is just, we'll get into that
00:45:07example later, but my point is
00:45:09people don't cover their face
00:45:11there in general. And so
00:45:13they took
00:45:15scholars in Malaysia,
00:45:17they moved away from
00:45:19the main opinion of the Shafi school, which is women
00:45:21have to cover their face, and they took the
00:45:23non-secondary opinion in the school.
00:45:25The second possibility,
00:45:27which is outside
00:45:29the medheb.
00:45:31Urf can mean that scholars
00:45:33go outside their school of law that they
00:45:35normally work in.
00:45:37And especially if you're in a place like North Africa,
00:45:39everybody is Maliki.
00:45:41You go to Southeast Asia, everybody is
00:45:43Shafi. You go to Turkey or the
00:45:45Middle East, everybody is Hanafi.
00:45:47So
00:45:49this can sometimes be a big deal.
00:45:51Because you're really going against the
00:45:53established school of law there.
00:45:55A good example of this is
00:45:57in the Hanafi
00:45:59school,
00:46:01the main rule was
00:46:03if there's a couple that's married,
00:46:05let's say the husband goes off on a trip
00:46:07as a merchant. He never
00:46:09comes back.
00:46:11What happens? The wife is sitting there.
00:46:13She needs, you know,
00:46:15is he dead? Can his
00:46:17estate be dispersed?
00:46:19Can I get remarried?
00:46:21How many years have to go by?
00:46:23The Hanafi school said
00:46:25the last thing we knew
00:46:27he was alive. We were sure he was
00:46:29alive. Until we're sure he's dead,
00:46:31we assume he's alive. So they had to
00:46:33wait the normal life span of a human
00:46:35being in order for the
00:46:37marriage to be dissolved.
00:46:39If you're living in a place, especially where there's
00:46:41a lot of travel, a lot of merchants
00:46:43going on sea voyages and
00:46:45getting in sea wrecks, or maybe they're just
00:46:47sick of you and they want to leave or something like that.
00:46:49That's not a good way to live.
00:46:51So in the Ottoman Empire,
00:46:53even though the Ottoman Empire
00:46:55was officially Hanafi,
00:46:57judges would say,
00:46:59we'll rule by the Shafi'i school.
00:47:01In the Shafi'i school of law, it's only four years.
00:47:03You only have to wait four years, and then the marriage
00:47:05can be declared over and you can
00:47:07remarry. By the way, the same thing
00:47:09I guess for a man, it would be not necessary.
00:47:11Unless he has four wives or whatever.
00:47:17And then,
00:47:19this is very, I found this
00:47:21fascinating example. Berber tribes
00:47:23in North Africa, in Morocco,
00:47:25what's now Morocco, Tunisia,
00:47:27Libya,
00:47:29they had customs that were very
00:47:31different from the Arabs in North Africa.
00:47:33So for example, if somebody
00:47:35got caught
00:47:37drinking alcohol,
00:47:39they'd burn his house down.
00:47:41It's pretty harsh, right?
00:47:43Or they'd fine
00:47:45the person.
00:47:47They'd ask them for a monetary fine.
00:47:49Actually, monetary fines are pretty rare
00:47:51in Islamic law. It's like the opposite of
00:47:53dealing with the IRS. A monetary fine
00:47:55is not a normal
00:47:57tool
00:47:59that Muslim scholars use, that Muslim judges use.
00:48:01But the Berbers
00:48:03used them a lot.
00:48:05And so what Muslim scholars
00:48:07in North Africa did is, it was hard enough
00:48:09just to get people to become Muslim.
00:48:11But they didn't really want to
00:48:13try to make them give up their culture entirely.
00:48:15Especially when there's really strong customs.
00:48:17So they would say,
00:48:19even though the scholars in North Africa
00:48:21are all Maliki, they'd say,
00:48:23Ahmed Ibn Hanbal, he said that
00:48:25if there's a person
00:48:27who's been required
00:48:29to pay a certain amount of money,
00:48:31a large amount of money, but they refuse.
00:48:33They just refuse to pay up.
00:48:35You can destroy that person's house
00:48:37as a punishment.
00:48:39Someone's refusing to pay up.
00:48:41So they took that one opinion
00:48:43and they used that as the basis
00:48:45for justifying the Berber customs.
00:48:47So you can see here, going outside the madhab
00:48:49to this opinion of Ahmed Ibn Hanbal.
00:48:51Oh, and the word
00:48:53al-wah,
00:48:55the idea was
00:48:57these Berbers would write these on
00:48:59lawh, like boards.
00:49:01They called them al-wah.
00:49:03The oldest one we know of is from the
00:49:051400s, early 1400s.
00:49:07Today,
00:49:09this has become extremely important.
00:49:11If you go to a country like
00:49:13I think Pakistan,
00:49:15you go to Jordan, Egypt,
00:49:17many Muslim countries,
00:49:19you'll find a rule
00:49:21which is that if you have
00:49:25let's say somebody
00:49:27my father just died.
00:49:29God rest his soul. My father died.
00:49:31Let's say I had died too.
00:49:33I have
00:49:35two children.
00:49:37The normal rule would be
00:49:39in the other madhabs, except for the Hanbali madhab,
00:49:41that my children don't
00:49:43get any inheritance, because inheritance is like
00:49:45a river. It's a flow through people.
00:49:47So I'm no longer here.
00:49:49So my children are cut off. The inheritance would go
00:49:51to other people.
00:49:53The Hanbali school of law says
00:49:55no, no, no. If you have orphaned
00:49:57grandchildren, the person
00:49:59is required to leave them
00:50:01specifically a certain amount of money.
00:50:03The person,
00:50:05who's will
00:50:07is being discussed, has to leave
00:50:09specifically money or assets
00:50:11for those orphaned grandchildren.
00:50:13So, this
00:50:15is actually the rule. Even in places
00:50:17where nobody follows the
00:50:19Hanbali school of law, we use this rule
00:50:21from the Hanbali school of law because
00:50:23it seems to be more just
00:50:25in our day and age.
00:50:29Farthest to the right,
00:50:31you can even go
00:50:33outside of
00:50:35all four madhabs
00:50:37in Sunni Islam. This is pretty rare.
00:50:39It's pretty rare in
00:50:41the classical period.
00:50:43Someone who did this a lot was Ibn Taymiyyah,
00:50:45a famous scholar from Damascus
00:50:47who died in 1328.
00:50:49He was a Hanbali scholar, but he
00:50:51was extremely creative.
00:50:53Sometimes he felt that
00:50:55the real message of Islam was
00:50:57best expressed by going back to
00:50:59sometimes even the opinions of the
00:51:01companions of the Prophet.
00:51:03So, for example,
00:51:05travel
00:51:07in the Maliki school of law, Hanafi
00:51:09school of law, Shafi'i school of law, Hanbali school of law,
00:51:11they have very specific
00:51:13rules for how long. For example,
00:51:15I'm coming to Boston
00:51:17in the Hanbali school of law. If I stay
00:51:19here for more than 21
00:51:21prayers,
00:51:23I'm not traveling anymore.
00:51:25So if I stayed here for 4 or 5 days, I can't remember
00:51:27exactly where it is. If I stay here for 2 weeks,
00:51:29not travel. If I stay
00:51:31for 5 days, I can't
00:51:33combine my
00:51:35prayers, I can't shorten my prayers.
00:51:37What Ibn Taymiyyah said
00:51:39is, Ibn Abbas,
00:51:41the companion of the Prophet,
00:51:43his opinion was that
00:51:45you're traveling as long as you feel like you're
00:51:47traveling. So he really
00:51:49left it up to the individual, as long as
00:51:51they feel like they're traveling.
00:51:53Maybe I'm here
00:51:55in Boston for 5 days,
00:51:57but every day I'm moving from a different hotel,
00:51:59I have meetings all day,
00:52:01sometimes I don't even have a place to
00:52:03put my bag, I'm walking
00:52:05around just, I'm here
00:52:07for 5 days, beyond what
00:52:09the Hanbali school would say is the limit of travel,
00:52:11but I really feel like I'm traveling.
00:52:13So this is an example, he's going outside all
00:52:15the madhabs and he's going to his opinion
00:52:17of the companion, Ibn Abbas,
00:52:19and taking his opinion.
00:52:21Also, Ibn Taymiyyah denied that
00:52:23if a guy,
00:52:25a man says, I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce
00:52:27you to his wife, he said this is not
00:52:29valid. You have to say this over 3 months.
00:52:31As the Quran
00:52:33states. And he goes to the opinion of
00:52:35Ibn Abbas as well on this issue.
00:52:37Even though all the madhabs said that,
00:52:39no, if a man says, I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you
00:52:41in one sitting, he's divorced from his
00:52:43wife. Ibn Taymiyyah said that's not the
00:52:45Quranic message.
00:52:47A good
00:52:49example of this today is handshaking.
00:52:51Which is, you know,
00:52:53I guess controversial, but
00:52:55nowadays there's so many other controversies.
00:52:57Feels like it's not that controversial.
00:52:59But if you look
00:53:01at some, for example, the European
00:53:03Council of Fatwa and Research
00:53:05and Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi,
00:53:07their opinion is that
00:53:09it's okay for men and women to shake hands
00:53:11as long as there's no risk of fitna.
00:53:13So if you're walking, if you're in a
00:53:15business meeting in America,
00:53:17you can shake hands with another man or
00:53:19woman. You're in a
00:53:21business meeting, there's no risk of fitna in this situation.
00:53:23They would allow that.
00:53:25Some people still say it's haram, because
00:53:27if you look at the schools of law in general,
00:53:29they'll say this is haram.
00:53:31It's haram for unrelated
00:53:33men and women to shake hands.
00:53:36But
00:53:38here you have
00:53:40scholars like Yusuf al-Qaradawi
00:53:42going, in general,
00:53:44outside the methods, even though in the Hanbali school
00:53:46I think there's a minority opinion that you can shake
00:53:48hands if you're like a merchant or something like that.
00:53:50Or if you're a merchant and there's another woman
00:53:52who's selling pistachio nuts or
00:53:54something and you have to shake hands about a big deal
00:53:56about pistachio nuts or something like that.
00:53:58That would be acceptable. But here they're
00:54:00really going back and looking again at,
00:54:02kind of reinterpreting the hadiths on this and coming up with
00:54:04a law that goes outside the
00:54:06existing schools of law.
00:54:10Everybody happy with those examples?
00:54:12How much more time? Okay.
00:54:14I'm going to end pretty soon.
00:54:20It ends at 9?
00:54:26Okay.
00:54:30I'll get through this quickly.
00:54:34Important things to keep in mind.
00:54:36Just because a scholar
00:54:38gives an opinion
00:54:40doesn't mean it's correct.
00:54:42Sometimes people, even classical
00:54:44Muslim scholars who weren't tempted by
00:54:46the West or weren't trying to
00:54:48get on CNN because they're
00:54:50a liberal imam or something like that,
00:54:52they could come up with rulings that were just
00:54:54wrong. For example, a scholar,
00:54:56a Hanafi scholar named
00:54:58al-Kumari, who died in
00:55:00991, common era,
00:55:02is from Bukhara. He said that
00:55:04these workers who are loading
00:55:06bales of cotton and stuff like that,
00:55:08that their
00:55:10stomachs were always showing, the area between their
00:55:12navel and their pubic area was always
00:55:14showing. Their shirts were getting lifted up. He said,
00:55:16no, no, that's fine.
00:55:18This is your urf. It's necessary.
00:55:20It's not awrah.
00:55:22No.
00:55:24That's not. The awrah is set
00:55:26from the hadiths of the Prophet.
00:55:28We don't know whether they have exceptions to this.
00:55:30People have to
00:55:32yank up their sarong or yank up
00:55:34their pants a little bit. He was really
00:55:36criticized for this. A lot of times
00:55:38actually, it's women who suffer.
00:55:40Nowadays we think about
00:55:42urf as being this thing that's going to liberalize
00:55:44Sharia, liberalize Islamic law, but actually
00:55:46historically, urf actually was
00:55:48something that oftentimes took away women's rights.
00:55:50In
00:55:52North Africa, in the Middle
00:55:54Ages, it was,
00:55:56a lot of times, urf was used
00:55:58as an excuse for men to take
00:56:00over their wives' property.
00:56:02In our society, the husbands
00:56:04really control their wives' property.
00:56:06Even though in Islamic law, the
00:56:08wife's property is her property.
00:56:10And then
00:56:12as a great example of this, actually
00:56:14it happened now
00:56:16in a court case in the United States, but I don't want to get
00:56:18into it because it would make me too angry
00:56:20and take too much time.
00:56:24Just because
00:56:26Muslims did something
00:56:28in the past, doesn't mean it was right.
00:56:30Sometimes Muslims did things that
00:56:32was wrong, and there's nothing
00:56:34any Muslim scholar did could change that.
00:56:36And
00:56:38Sharif and I were talking about this on the phone.
00:56:40If you ever want a
00:56:42very interesting read, read
00:56:44The Travels of Ibn Battuta
00:56:46by a scholar named Ross Dunn.
00:56:48It's a great book, The Travels of Ibn Battuta.
00:56:50Famous Moroccan
00:56:52traveler traveled all over the Muslim world,
00:56:54inside the Muslim world, in the mid-1300s.
00:56:56He was actually
00:56:58a judge. He worked as a judge in the
00:57:00Maldives Islands in the Indian Ocean.
00:57:02And he
00:57:04tried his best to
00:57:06change customs that he considered bad
00:57:08orf. So for example, one custom
00:57:10was that if a woman,
00:57:12man divorced his wife,
00:57:14or woman left her husband, she had to
00:57:16live in her former husband's house
00:57:18until she remarried.
00:57:20That's kind of awkward.
00:57:22He said this is unacceptable.
00:57:24And he actually would have people
00:57:26fined or lashed if they did this.
00:57:28So he really tried to change this.
00:57:30Other things he couldn't change.
00:57:32The women went topless a lot of the time.
00:57:34He said,
00:57:36the most he could do is if they came into his court,
00:57:38he made them wear something over their upper body.
00:57:40But he just couldn't change people's orf.
00:57:42In the Ottoman Empire,
00:57:44riba
00:57:46was common. It was so common
00:57:48in fact that Muslim scholars stopped trying to
00:57:50prevent it, and they just started trying to
00:57:52regulate it. So they wanted to make sure that
00:57:54you didn't have people being charged
00:57:56too much interest.
00:57:58They didn't want people getting
00:58:00charged usurious amounts of interest
00:58:02like 11-12% interest.
00:58:04So they set a limit, I think at 11%
00:58:06interest. And they would try and make sure no one went above
00:58:08that. Because they just simply could not get rid
00:58:10of the actual practice of usury.
00:58:12So sometimes you just can't get rid of things.
00:58:16This is something that
00:58:18we have to think about today
00:58:20in America. Because
00:58:22orf in America is that
00:58:24men and women are
00:58:26participants in public life.
00:58:28Women participate in leadership.
00:58:30Women expect their
00:58:32voices to be heard as part of communities.
00:58:34Women expect
00:58:36to have facilities that are comfortable
00:58:38in the mosque.
00:58:40I think these are fair expectations.
00:58:44But where does
00:58:46the mutaghayrat
00:58:48end and the thawabit
00:58:50begin? So for example,
00:58:52we can say
00:58:54we want to make sure that women have a large
00:58:56space in the mosque
00:58:58where all the women who want to come to Jumu'ah can pray.
00:59:00They can see the imam.
00:59:02They don't feel like they're shut off and that there's
00:59:04something shameful about them.
00:59:06But at the same time,
00:59:08does that mean that we're going to allow
00:59:10women to lead prayer?
00:59:12Is that mean we're going to allow
00:59:14men and women to pray side by side?
00:59:16Here you start coming up against
00:59:18the
00:59:20fact that in Islam
00:59:22the default assumption
00:59:24in worship is that
00:59:26things are prohibited until you have
00:59:28evidence that they're allowed. And everything else
00:59:30except for marriage,
00:59:32everything else like contracts,
00:59:34buying,
00:59:36selling, eating, whatever.
00:59:38The default assumption is that something is allowed.
00:59:40It's halal until it's proven that it's haram.
00:59:42In worship, it's haram until it's proven
00:59:44that it's halal by evidence from the Quran
00:59:46and the Sunnah.
00:59:48Here we have to be very sensitive
00:59:50because we have to take into consideration
00:59:52we also don't want to be
00:59:54I hate to say it,
00:59:56maybe some of the first Muslims in history
00:59:58to really trample on those
01:00:00unchanging rules of how we worship.
01:00:02And so
01:00:04this is something that Muslim scholars
01:00:06and Muslim communities are debating today.
01:00:08And it's probably
01:00:10the best example of where we're dealing
01:00:12with the issue of orf, at least
01:00:14in mosques and things like that.