Lives of the 4 Imams: Abu Hanifa - Part 1

[Music] me [Applause] is i'd like to begin by saying that it is a pleasure and an honor for me to be able to start this glorious series a very new series which i haven't delivered before yet not in detail and even now i'm not going to be able to deliver in the detail that i want the talk that i and the series which i'm talking about is basically about the lives of one of the most renowned scholars in our islamic history the four we call them the four imams who occupy the four schools of thought i don't know if you've heard of people calling themselves for example hanafi or hambali or well these are named after these great scholars if a person says to you i'm hanafi it means that they follow the school of thought of the great imam abu hanifah they say i am they follow the school of thought of the great imam medic if they say i am a shafili it means that they follow the great school of thought of the greatly manner and if they say i am humbly it means that they are following the school of thought of the great imam ahmed now i know that a lot of people haven't really heard about this before they just hear muslim muslim is muslim and that's it and i understand islam is one thing and muslim really is one type allah god brought down the same message throughout time it can't be a different message one time saying is one by the other time saying is two or three gods then that will be a contradiction and he sent the messengers and prophets delivering the same message over and over again out of his mercy and blessings so we send down the final revelation of the quran and the final prophet of law was muhammad sallallahu alaihi and the teachings are the same however let me begin by saying why or explaining why these schools of thought came to be and you'll understand the rationale behind it why are these schools why do people call themselves but personally i would like to say that i don't classify myself as muslim something yes in my childhood i was raised in the hanafi school of thought and as i grew up i studied the hamburi school of thought but for a person to say that i'm only a muslim hanafi or i'm only a muslim humbly or whatever for me it seems like some kind of a slight division if i stick to it with uh with strength and with stubbornness any school of thought because at the end of the day the common sense is we all have our prophet muhammad sallallahu alaihi and these people that came after they are great scholars who understood the message of the prophet peace be upon him more than us and what they did was they elaborated on it and they explained it to us and they became the greatest role models of all time for us so the only one as imam he said once when he was in mecca doing his hajj and then he went to medina he passed by the grave of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam and said everyone's statements can be argued and everyone's statements can be rejected proven to be wrong all of us including myself except for the owner of his grave meaning the prophet muhammad peace be upon him why the owner of this grave because he was the messenger of god and allah tells us in the quran [Applause] [Music] this messenger of yours never speaks about this religion anything from his own head he doesn't just make up things from his own opinion but rather he takes it from inspiration from an angel that comes down to him from god from allah who delivers this message to him in the quran and here we have it before us so it'll be this belief of course doesn't make sense at all to say that even muhammad peace be upon him the messenger of god he makes mistakes in the message it's like saying that allah god made a mistake and if we say that then we say allah allah is he makes mistakes he's fallible is like a human being but everyone else we're humans we don't receive from god things may be in dreams sometimes but not about the message of islam or a message of religion to spread to the people we take it from the prophets and these scholars they carry it and learn it and they can make mistakes and they can make correct opinions finally before i start with this great imam the first imam i want to talk about our prophet salallahu said in a means one who is endured with profound knowledge one who has got so much knowledge i a lot of knowledge and and often specialize in a particular area you can have a at one end of so much knowledge in maths and we call him an island like a professor of maths or a doctor of maths professor of astronomy or a doctor we strongly call him in astronomy there are people who are so knowledgeable in the religion and we call them islands scholars so when i say now here today tonight then the type of or one injured knowledge i'm talking about are the ones who are specialized in religious knowledge not in maths and religious knowledge these are the people i am talking about tonight is specific about those endured with religious knowledge it is a knowledge which in our time especially in 21st century something which is looked at as secondary it's not very important you know they look at maths and english and all the other subjects and science as being the most important but those subjects only benefit you here in this world when you die they're gone there's no more benefit from them anymore but what benefits you in both this world and in the hereafter is the knowledge of religion what is religion it has to be the right one so you investigate and i say to everybody please never accept something unless you've investigated it and never reject something unless you've investigated be fair and always try to look at things from all different perspectives you know something may look black and white to you but sometimes someone may give you a different perspective on it and suddenly you say i never thought of it that way and we're going to give some examples about that shortly in the life of this great man the first one i'm about to mention inshaallah also allah says in the quran praising the scholars and those endured with knowledge he says [Laughter] of greatness to himself that there is no god worthy of worship but him and he bears witness to the greatness of his creation of the angels and he bears witness to the importance and greatness of those endured with knowledge they they stand in justice you cannot apply justice anywhere between two people that if they come to you to help them out to be an umpire between them or you have a dispute with someone you can never ever apply justice unless you have knowledge if you don't have knowledge you will ruin everything you'll destroy everything cause people to fight rather than to come together and when i say knowledge brothers and sisters i don't just mean information you know people have hair they also have eyes and they have a nose and the reason they have this is because they appear to look good and the nose is the smell and the eyes is to see and that's about it no not just factual information when we say knowledge we are also talking about wisdom wisdom what to say at what time to whom before you answer a question you've got to try and study all the background information behind that question why did the person want to come and ask look at the context of why they're asking so you'll find that a person with knowledge not only do they know information but also they choose what to say at the right time and often these great scholars they never spoke they never gave someone an answer if they knew that the answer is going to be a negative one if it's any something about negativity they'd wait a long time to see whether it's beneficial or not any scholar of islam any scholar of islam at any time that ever answered anyone's question they used to put their heads down and they take time before they answered someone's question once imamatic i think was a magnetic as a student entered a person entered and asked him a question and his student was sitting next to him now you know when students we're enthusiastic students right who want to answer quickly give you a few hadiths banned they think they'll they can answer questions they want to try out their ability their it's like a student of martial arts the teachers tries to teach them patience and wisdom and they just want to go and pump people you know bashing punch them up they want to test their skills straight away but the teacher teaches them to exercise patience first and the wisdom behind martial arts we hear that all the time bruce lee talking about it yeah talking about wisdom and his teaching so before you exercise the knowledge the scholars used to put their heads down and this student looked at his imam and he said imam answer him like this student right had been speaking to this man before i told him like how he man he's so much knowledge there is nothing almost that he doesn't know so he pumped up his imam right and when this person came in to ask the imam a question the man put his head down for a few for at least five minutes and he's not answering and the student says but the question is easier imam answer in the end the imam said to his student i'm thinking whether so he said i know the answer but i'm thinking whether answering him is better for him or not or my silence is better for him so not only were they injured with knowledge they were also full of wisdom when to apply the knowledge of what time and i'll give you one more example about this great knowledge they call him islam as a title he passed by a group of people called the mongols they had just embraced islam at this time not haven't got time to talk about it but the mongols they converted to islam but the problem was they still had very bad character they still had that barbaric approach they liked killing they like fighting they like chopping people's heads off and they still have that barbaric nature so the character of islam had not yet been envisaged in their hearts and he passed by them with a group of his students again the students enthusiastic the imam full of wisdom and knowledge they saw them drinking alcohol in a muslim state in an islamic state and you know alcohol is forbidden and these are muslims drinking in islamic state where it's forbidden legally if you drink you get imprisoned or they get penalized like speeding or crossing the red light so what happened they looked at the imam and the man kept going he saw them drinking he kept going so his students enthusiastically said iman you saw them doing something wrong and the prophet told us to forbid the wrong the evil and to command good he said these people are barbaric still in nature if i stop them from drinking right there i fear that they're going to resort to violence because they're entertaining themselves by being drunk at least that way they won't sit there harming people so he knew the law of if stopping a harm will result in a greater harm then leave that arm there as it is and don't try to change it right now if a heart stopping a harm is going to lead to a greater harm for example sometimes you may have a dispute with someone and you know that if you continue arguing with that person it's going to lead to a fight you can see it in their face you can see the person's not he's not being civilized they just want to debate and argue so then out of your wisdom if you've got knowledge you'll stop the argumentation because what's going to happen next you can tell is going to be a greater haram it's going to be more forbidden you're going to fight with your brother and stand in a cut-off relationships so you stop there and let it be so this is endured with knowledge and wisdom and the prophet peace be upon him said knowledge is light without knowledge you are in darkness knowledge is the greatest protection anyone can have when you know more you can save yourself you protect yourself you reach more heights and share a lot and you have more self-respect when you know more and that's what differentiates the human from the animals the animals don't know the humans are given intelligence and when we know more that's why you get offended if someone calls you an animal because animals have no intelligence so intelligence and knowledge and wisdom is the virtue of the prophets and the virtue of the inheritors of the prophets did you hear what i said the inheritors of the prophets the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam said in the prophets never left behind them a legacy of wealth wealth you know properties and wealth when someone dies they leave behind their mistakes and wealth and then their children and their family inherit them right they inherit their wealth well the prophets never left behind them property and wealth for inheritance what they did leave behind that others inherited of them was knowledge that is what prophets left behind the messenger of allah left knowledge behind and look what you can do with knowledge knowledge is endless knowledge is beautiful knowledge is light the scholars are the inheritors of the prophets you want to know who the inheritors of the prophets are the heirs of the prophets are the scholars so my brothers and sisters the scholars say unanimously and i think it was a sahabi one of the companions of the prophet peace be upon him who said backbiting someone backbiting another person backbiting another brother or sister of yours is like eat is like eating their flesh that's also in the hands then he said but backbiting scholars is also like eating their flesh but the flesh of the scholars are poisoned you're eating poisoned flesh it's poison to back bite and slander and put down scholars because when you put scholars down you have put down a whole generation in nation to come for this reason i bring to you these great scholars of all time after the companions of the prophet peace be upon him and the reason i want to mention them is not so that we can after this say have a debate over which scholar is better than the other which school of thought is better than the other if you do that then my dear brother or sister i have to say that that action would be of action of ignorance because when i finish this series over four weeks insha'allah you will find that these great scholars when we are debating about their excellence over one another they never spoke this language about each other and in fact they all learned from each other they were the teachers of each other the first of them is the great imam abu that is not his real name this is his nickname but his real name is his first name the son of thabet who was his father the son of man his grandfather the son of zola joban his great grandfather is a persian name so imam origin he was a non-arab but he was born among the arabs lived among the arabs and learnt the arabic language and i'm going to come back to that idea of being on arab in a minute because something very interesting to say about it but this man was also nicknamed imam muslim the leader of the muslims he was also nicknamed al-imam al-arab the ever so great imam the great scholar he was nicknamed this even by the scholars who came after him and even by the contemporary skull scars that lived in his time they named him an imam album and this is a nickname of abu hanifa as well a title imam abu hanifa was what we call one of the generations of me let me explain what it is you got the prophet muhammad sallallahu alaihi then you've got the sahaba the sahaba are the companions a companion of the prophet is anyone who met the prophet saws physically spent time with him believed in him and died on that belief we call them a sahabi a companion they're the best generation the best of all generations and they're the ones who brought the knowledge to us they sacrificed their lives to bring it to us after the companions there are those next generation who are the second best generation and they are called meaning those who followed the first generation that followed atabili is anyone who met a companion of the prophet sallallahu alaihi believed in the messenger of the prophet and died on that message and there were some debbie's who lived in the time of the prophet saws was living but they never met the prophet peace be upon him because they were living somewhere far and the proper peace be upon him died so they only probably half of his time they're not called sahaba companions they're called and guess what imam abu hanifa the majority of scholars historians said that he was a the reason why they say he was a tabby was because he actually lived and met lived in a time and met some of the companions of the prophet sallallahu alaihi he was said he when he sat in one of the classes of the companion hypnomatic and at the age of 13 anderson died was 13 years old and he died he lived he was born in the year 699 80 injury and he was a scholar of two very important subjects our theater theology and jurisprudence how to practice your deen in salat prayer fasting legal systems uh chronology inheritance finance he was and he was a extraordinary scholar of these areas extraordinary this is what he specialized in but especially what we call jury sprints how to live your life as a muslim in all areas every area of interaction of life every area he was the man for it he was the man for it now the majority of scholars that existed with around abu hanifa's time and by the way abu hanif was born in iraq in a city called kufa in that area kufa and another area called boston and makkah and medina they were the center of knowledge all the scholars of the world centered there the best scholars of the world were the best and then and abu hanif was born in kaufa over there these great scholars among them were his teachers there were four teachers who were from the family of the prophet muhammed himself they were from his bloodline i'm going to come back to them in a minute but first these scholars that lived around them the majority of them the majority of them great spots that we mentioned today were non-arabs they were of non-arab origin not only that many of them were either sons of slaves who had been freed sons of slaves who had been freed or they were non-arabs non-arabs were migrated so they and a lot of them they converted to islam they were not muslim and these great scholars we live our religion today off their backs such as a man of bukhari wasn't he wasn't an arab for example we had an isa we have and even converts to islam and also sons of freed slaves as for abu khan he was a free man he was never a slave and he was not arab as we said and his grandfather was a friend of ali of the companion there was a man a political a personal political power by the name was a scholar at that time by the name of uh and this man is a political man with power he came up to this scholar and he asked him he asked them about the greatest scholars of kufa and the greatest scholars of boston the greatest scholars the greatest scholars that existed and he said if later says i started telling him all these names and he asked me what are their origins and i would say non-arab sons of servants sons of slaves non-arab sons of servants non-arab and he and and this man was politically as an arab he started getting angry every time he asked about great scholars he would mention non-arab ones so then he asked him about kufa who are the greatest scholars of there and evan abhinav he was starting to get scared he said this political man he's got powers getting angry he's going to get scared so he thought and i think i better not mention the greatest great scholars i'll mention some of the arab ones who are great scholars just to let him calm down a little bit so he mentioned in kufa al-imam who was in fact the greatest scholar of kufa he happened to be an arab and he was the direct teacher the first teacher of abu hanifah and also ibrahim and nakhani and he was also an arab and at that point said allahu akbar long live the scholars only two arabs whom he was and this is just to point out that islam is a non-nationalistic religion and that scholars can be of any origin any shape any size i mean ibrahimovic who was the teacher of his teacher he was short skinny and fragile weak build he saw only with one eye so he had a patch on one eye and you can only see with one eye he wasn't something that you'd fear when you see him but when he entered everybody respected him and revered him and people were quiet and silent afraid to say anything wrong before out of respect so knowledge gives you absolute respect and reverence in all sorts really from the heart to the heart now the story of abu hanifah how did he become an imam scholar first of all unlike the other imams were raised inside the masjids they were raised inside the masjids that's basically they raised all their life in religion was different in the early time of his life as he was a young man he actually was very far away from knowledge like you didn't really know much just what the common people was from the common masses we called it so he was like a late company a lightcomer into knowledge which gives us an idea that you know it doesn't matter how old you are there's always inshallah time for you to learn knowledge and i i i envy you know that some people in the west have taken this from probably studied the history of of muslims and they said doesn't matter what age you are i mean at university now you go there's people 60 years old starting a new course or 40 or 50. so there's no it's never late for knowledge and imam abu hanifa i'll tell you just one little story about when he was a child although he wasn't very you know he hadn't started his islamic education imam abu hanifa was in june with intelligence beyond mission very very intelligent look at something he was he was full of reasoning very rational person looked at things in common sense a lot of things from all perspective every way four-dimensional thought four-dimensional a lot of us were just one-dimensional it was four-dimensional i'm going to give you some examples very soon at one time the romans who were as far as china and spain that's how far islam reached and thoughts of like philosophy and argumentation began to come into the lands of the muslims and so there were disagreements about things people started to use their opinion opinionated my opinion says this and in the others in my opinion said that so people were just talking about opinionated thoughts and who can beat in the argument there's no real fun foundation or basis for real knowledge they didn't work on proof anymore a lot of the people so these scholars came in to set straight these people's thoughts once again was one full of reasoning and the romans sent an envoy a man to try and trick them to try and put doubt about their religion so a man came along and he said to the people gathered people said i have come with three questions he stood up and he said my first question is who was there before god before allah was there and then the second question right now allah is facing in which direction and number three what is allah doing right now abu hanifa was only about 10 years old or 12 years old that time no one could answer so he said let me answer father so he came up and he said to him as for who is before god uh we know this narration he said count from ten backwards and he counted until he reached zero he said what's before one he said zero so what's before they said nothing i don't give this minus one minus two that's actually a number zero is basically the end and he said what's before when he said nothing he said so the lord of the worlds the glorious creator how can he not be the beginner of everything when in in actual common sense and logic you count backwards and you end up with one and there's nothing before them then he asked him the second question he said what about god where is he facing in which direction is he facing now he said if you light up a candle what do you see he said light he said in which direction is the candle light facing he said it's not facing any particular direction light light is facing everywhere right there's no particular direction he said then what do you say about allah who is the light of lights how can i say which direction he's facing as for the third answer he said to him to answer your third question you have to come down here and i go up there because the people want to hear the answer and if you want to you know basically get me in your question then at least let everybody hear my answers only fear because you made your question in front of people let me answer in front of the people so i thought that's common sense so we got up and he said uh what is allah doing right now he said right now he is making the one who is on falsehood come down off the pulpit and the one full of success to climb up the pulpit to answer and prove it wrong so he said this is what allah is doing right now so every time every action that happens in life this is what allah is doing right now allah is doing this if it wasn't for god we will all be non-existent dead god because we don't keep ourselves alive allah keeps us alive allah gives everything emotion it doesn't keep itself in motion right nothing keeps itself immersion comes to an end was also asked about how can you prove god's existence as a child he said well if you had a ship that was sailing in this in the sea and it had no people to steer the boat no people were paddling no sailors no propellers nothing just a piece of bird in the sea and he wanted to sail from one direction to the other and reach that destination can that ship reach its destination by itself this he said no he said well then how can this world and your emotion and your heart beat a new existence emotion all of that live and go without someone controlling it just like the ship cannot control itself and maneuver itself without any you know electronics and without any satellite without any of this then how can you be able to move and limit without someone guiding you and being your navigator in control so it controls your heart and your life so just to illustrate how intelligent he was even from a very young age before he even reached received islamic knowledge in his time there was the abbasid the umayya era umayya era was a time where khanifa's were coming leaders of muslims were coming and going but there was one problem these new leaders of muslims see he lived he lived about he lived in the time of about 40 different leaders of the muslims and one one of them was he's a great leader but the rest of them that he lived amongst they were corrupt he lived in a time where rule was being corrupt by its leaders and he was fed up with that because imam abu hanifa was a man of justice and fairness he was born in the time of abdullah one of the khalifas and then he died and then he lived a little bit for about two years and then came the one he had the most dispute with the leader the king in other words the like saying the king of the of of the muslims of the ugly of the whole empire the leader of the muslims his name was but it goes to show that not just because if a person has knowledge that he is he or she is necessarily a man of god people use their knowledge for corruption and people can use their knowledge to be god-fearing and this is the absolute point which i have chosen have accepted to give this topic about the poor imams my brothers and sisters knowledge and iodines are not someone without god fearance god consciousness fairness and justice of the highest character why because allah describes the island in the quran he says verily the ones who really fear their god meaning they are steadfast on the right track and they are full of character and justice and fairness and kindness and mercy and all of that stuff are the ones endured with knowledge why because without knowledge you cannot have good character and justice without knowledge so allah is telling us that if a person has got so much knowledge but they have no good character they are not the scholars which allah praises they are not you can have a little bit of knowledge and have great character and you will be more of an island than an islam who has no character you know that if you have arrogance and proudliness over what you know to show it off in front of people you are not ahead if you learn knowledge only to debate people and to make them look like they were wrong and you were right you are not if you have great knowledge and you abuse and disrespect and uh being just to the people you are not ahead are the ones who fear allah and we're going to study what was like so this man even though he knew abu hanifa was among the greatest scholars he was also corrupt in his rule gave land to family members of his and was unjust when it came to courts you know doing justice on members of the of the government they gave him failures they failed but when he came from a person from the common people they ruled against him with harshness and such was the ruling unfortunately they came about unfortunately in some of the muslim eras which is very unfortunate and sad one day imam abu hanifa was only about 21 years old and by the way he was a businessman he had he operated a business in textiles silk and material this was his business and that was his trade and i'd like to say every scholar they had two things they had knowledge of religion and they had a skill so my brothers and sisters if you want to have religious knowledge i advise you don't have religious knowledge only by itself the rest of your life have a skill or a trade or some kind of another lunch to survive upon imam abu hanifa refused to ever accept any money or wealth or reward for teaching his knowledge what he did was from his business the profit and the profit that he made was in order to sustain himself and to sustain his students he had over a thousand students in one time and he used to pay them so he they do two things he gave them his knowledge and he gave them wealth to sustain themselves in those days they didn't pay students to look after themselves he was the one that did that for this reason brothers and sisters imam abu hanifa the great scholar he he did not owe anyone anything so he did not have to you know obey the government in in in justice he had nothing he didn't want anything from them he didn't need anything from them he was self-sustained so this made him be just and he did not care what he said so long as it's the truth even in front of the biggest tyrant and that is the greatest form of jihad to say a truthful word before a tyrant a man of truth spoke the truth and spoke the truth at the right time and only spoke the truth when the truth was going to be beneficial you know some people they speak the truth like let's say you lie and they say they go around out of nowhere you're alive you're alive there's no need to call him a liar at this time but imam abu hanifa chose the right time to say the truth he was passing by one there was about 19 or 21 years old and a great imam ashabi he can tell a lot about that person from looking at your face features and this is actually a science he looked at this young boy and he's mistaken he was saying he thought that he was a student so we asked him where are you going and the imam said i'm going to on a business errand so that's not what i'm asking you why aren't you in class he thought there was a student abu hanifa said i'm not really a student of knowledge a shabby looked at him with a sad face and said no you look like an intelligent young man and i could see it in your face how about i advise you to take on knowledge of this deep i think a lot is going to come out of you imam alhani for that day he thought about it and truly this inspired him to become a student of imam shabi and so he began his journey of knowledge i'd like to make a little point you have children sons daughters you meet a young person always inspire them encourage them with a positive statement even if you know it's not true for example you look at a young man you look at his face and you say you know what your face looks like a person who will one day memorize the quran and watch what happens he'll put it in your head i asked one of a chef colleague of mine who became an imam and i asked him i go what inspired you to become a chef so when i was a child everyone used to say chef shared shave when i grew up i became a chef so what you say to young people really is a positive inspires them to become and this is how abu hanifa became one of the most renowned great scholars look at that imam shabi not knowing what's going to become of this man inspires him and becomes one of the greatest scholars of all time imam abu hanifa took some lessons under this imam shabi but there was one problem as i said before there was philosophy and argumentation signs of augmentation in the land so honeybees to sit in some of the circles and the students and people began they love to talk about issues and argumentations you know talk about this talk about that talk about this school of thought this sect that sec this idea that idea and he started to get get sucked into this philosophy and argumentation my opinion your opinion but i think this is a tackle from this angle but then he found that this philosophy was not based on real proof and all it did was it hardened the hearts and i'd like to say brothers and sisters this is why muslims should avoid argumentation as much as they can because argumentation even in the religion hardens the heart those who argue too much even in the religion all they care about is my opinion has to be the correct one and the heart the heart in their hearts and these are people far away from being god-fearing they start back biting gossiping slandering abusing that's what happens to these people brothers and sisters and science today is all about that people study just science it's about just proving my opinion grudges jealousy envy this is what it's all about argumentation is the most looked upon looked down upon bad character in any muslim in islam so he said i don't i didn't like it he left it and he went to his next shed after studying and passed away and he went there sorry man then he went to his renowned sheikh came to be his teacher for the next 18 years of abu hanifah's life imam hamad he studied of companions like abdullah ibn massoud is great there's great uh teachers of the past who taught his teachers great companions of the prophet senator so brothers and sisters was not just a person who spoke from his mind he was a man who spoke through evidence and proof and he learned of shaykhs and masters who learned of companions such as these were companions of prophesying with great knowledge he wasn't just any man as people assume i hear about people saying he hardly used evidence and proof he he deduced information through his opinions reasoning no so don't you know people who chew gum and just talk whatever spit anything out these are people not injured with knowledge then learned after that now there's so much information i can give you but for the lack of time we may need to cut the time talk a little bit over honey for today and a little bit about it next week inshallah but just to finish the next few minutes we have on the first day imam hamad placed abu hanifa in the back room from the first day he noticed that was very bright so from the next day onwards abu hanifah always sat on the right side of his iman until his death there was no scholar that imam abu hanifa he sat with them all there is even one time when he went to medina and he sat i'm going to say that humbleness was about 40 years old he went to madinah and he sat in one of the circles of imam malik malik was only 13 years old and he learned a few things off imma manipulate it was only 13 years old and when he left him malik met with another contemporary scholar who was sitting there his name was abdullah and he came up to him and said satan was saying he said do you know who this man is he said no he said he is abu hanifa he is the man that if he were to tell me that this pillar which is made of brick is made of water he can convince me because he was so intelligent in his words so imam abu hanifa learned of imam hamad and then in boston and he had of imam hassan and he continued his knowledge from these great eminence scholars when imam abu hanifa was about 30 years old he had lived under imam from after 30 years before when he was 30 years old for about eight years and one day his teacher said i have a funeral to attend a family member of mine dying so can you take my place just until i'm gone now in those days i'm gonna be away for two months not like today it's on one day they had to travel long distances two months remember i never had to be the teacher to the students now he said at that day was saying like you know when students they get the urge or i think they've got a lot of knowledge so they want to give some of their knowledge he said that that morning i was thinking to myself i'd like to take a class and subhanallah imam said there's a death in my family can you take my class so it considered coincided with that so remember came up and he took the class he goes in those two months 60 issues were put to me 16 matters were put to me and i answered them all and i wrote them all down to check them with my imam when he came back when my imam came back i gave him to check my 60 matters and iman found 40 of my answers were correct and 20 of them were incorrect abu hanifa said i said i will never take a class again until my iman dies and truly that's what happened showing your brothers and sisters as soon as someone learns a hadith or two you want to give fat was left right and center you become an imam in a shade and you like people calling you a shade and if they don't call you a shirt you get upset this is haram these eminent scholars 30 years of age great imam he says well i will never take a class or answer anyone's question until my imam dies and i and he qualifies and that's how they were god's fearing because he used to say anyone who learns knowledge and doesn't consider that they are going to be questioned about every answer they give about their knowledge on the day of judgment is not a is not a knowledgeable person at all doesn't know his religion developed something that no other imam before him bit him he developed something called a code of principles in how to directly look at the quran and hadith and make a ruling out of it this never existed before to directly get a verse or a and be able to study that verse and study that hadith to bring out more than 10 20 or even 100 different principles and rules no one knew how to do that so imam came and he created a principle a code of how to get a verse and a hadith and how to systematically get out from it more than 10 or 20 or 50 or 100 rulings of different sorts now remember why they have to do that because the muslims have dispersed throughout the world and they have gone to places like spain and greece and so on and societies were different there and the muslims needed more information more things to be able to settle their affairs in life like in courts different like for example today we have cigarettes and smoking how do we know cigarettes and smoking is haram in the quran it doesn't say cigarettes after so don't smoke cigarettes or ecstasy pills are forbidden so don't take ecstasy or spearing it is haram is in the hadith no no we can only have that but imam hanifa he helped us he says in order to derive new things that come up in your society and to know whether the when you can't find a direct information in the quran or the words of the prophet peace be upon him or his actions then i will teach you how to use the same sources to understand in everything in your life whether it's good or bad permissible or not permissible he was the first to create that system no one before he could do that and so for example he gives us uh you know these logical explanations logical ways of deriving these these rulings for example it's called the analogy deduction of rulings by analogy so you look at something and you say this is like that so for example cigarette smoking used to be disliked but then later scholars came and they studied the verses and they found that the prophet peace be upon him said everything that intoxicates your mind and anything that makes you drunk makes you high or toxication that makes you drunk is forbidden and they deduced from that that cigarettes and smoking is one of those that creates a bit of intoxication in the body makes you high a little bit and also creates direct harm and kills you directly in a very harmful way you and other people and they also said no harming yourself and no harming others cigarette smoking harms you and by passive smoking harms babies and pregnant women other people if you smoke and you're addicted to it i ask a lost my daughter to assist you and help you to stop it but we don't put too much pressure on those or addicted we know how hard it is but it is forbidden absolutely forbidden completely on a greater degree for anyone who's never smoked and they want to start smoking for example so this is what i'm trying to let you understand that new things that come up in our life if it wasn't for people like imam abu hanifa bringing this code of how to deduce from quran and sunnah rulings then we would have not known today and i'd like to say that there are a lot of black and white people islam is not a black and white religion when we say black and white we mean that it is a clear religion it doesn't mean that solidly one plus one equals two and it can't equal anything else okay so and i'm going to give some well it can't equal anything else but it's not like that islam is quite colorful but everything has to be based on evidence and proof and every logical reasoning has to come based on proof and evidence that go back to the proper peace be upon it if there's no basis for it then we throw it away or we may accept it but it's not part of the religion so imam abu hanifa did this and the latest goals that came after him also used clears and the same principles after him in fact they elaborated on it they built it more they improved it they improved it even more so don't anyone say imam innovated something no no he was not he did not innovate anything and none of the scholars that came after him ever said so what he did was he made the understanding of our religion easier and that's why the majority of the people of the world follow the school of thought of imam but we're going to talk about that another time it's an ugly topic to talk about of how muslims today have taken it and how imam al-hanifani's students taught us is a little bit different but imam abu hanifa taught us to use evidence and so on and to always not take something blindly he also said my words and the words of others can be rejected at any time we say something today and tomorrow we may change our mind all except what goes back to the quran and to the prophet peace be upon him that cannot be rejected and if what you see and what your scholars discover that is more closer to the truth of the quran and the sunnah is better than mine then throw my saying across the wall and take that as my saying for this is all my goal and this is the goal of all the scholars anyway to reach the correct opinion finally the scholar if he or she uh if he or she suggests a ruling and gets that ruling correct then he or she has the double the result but if he or she tries their best and gets their ruling incorrect then they will still have one reward they still have one record so this is how these scholars were because they were wanting to bring us the truth well because of the lack of time brothers and sisters in sha allah next week we'll come back and instead of speaking straight into imam malik which is the second imam after him we will talk and finish the to accept our deeds and our intention and our coming here by our intentions i ask allah to endure us with knowledge that is beneficial to us and whatever knowledge you have to make it beneficial to the muslims around the world let it be science maths astronomy whatever it is foreign m foreign

Channel: MyVoice Media

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Keywords: bilal, assad, belal, assaad, imams, imaams, abu, hanifa, iisna, biography, islam, muslim, islaam, myvoice, myvoicemedia, Abu Hanifa, Hanafi, Shafi'i, Maliki, hambali, Hanbali, shafii, thefourimams, thefourgreatimams, muslims, ahmadbinhanbal, imammalik, MuhammadibnIdrisAl-Shafiʽi, MalikibnAnas, Abū Ḥanīfa an-Nu‘man ibn Thābit

Id: WYZWPo1S-SI

Length: 54min 29sec (3269 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 06 2011