[uplifting music] >> There is a very rich history of Islam. A very rich history. And it really is kind of outside
the scope of Apologetics, though, for the most part. So I'm not going to cover it in-depth. What matters far more is
the history of Muhammad, and we are gonna talk about that here. But I'm gonna give you a
brief overview of Islam. Muhammad was born at the end
of Sixth Century, 570 AD. He started his ministry again, well, the Quran came first in 610 AD. He dies in 632 when the
Early Caliphate starts. Muslims consider, Sunni Muslims
consider the Early Caliphate to be rightly guided. In other words, these people
were appointed by God, and these people were, their decisions were divinely ordained, though they were not
prophets like Muhammad. They were rightly guided by Allah. Again that's a Sunni belief. The Later Caliphate, not so much. Lasted 'til 1258. The Spanish Inquisition
is often understood as the downfall of the Islamic society, the beginning of the tables turning. And then the Ottoman Empire
we know last 'til 1924. Here's a graphic of the
expansion of the Islamic Empire. You take a look at the red there, that's what Muhammad managed
to do during his time. He had conquered pretty
much all of Arabia. Unbelievable what he was able to do, especially since he did most
of that in about 13 years. Then we see, take a look
at the pink section, or the salmon section if you will. That was the expansion during
the Rightly Guided Caliphs, the first few caliphs, and then after that the Umayyad Caliphate. So by the middle of the Eighth Century, you have got Islam expanding
from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indus. That's fast, and Muslims
often see this as a sign of God's divine seal of
approval on the Islamic Empire. They're very proud of that,
the rate of expansion. A lot of Muslims will say that this was, especially the West, will say that this was not
the result of the wars. The wars, though it did expand the empire, it didn't convert people, is what a lot of people will say. The conversions happened when people saw how beautiful Islam was. But the expansion of the the
empire did happen through war. That's what they'll often say. Not the conversions, but
the expansion of the empire. Muhammad's life though
is extremely important, especially for apologetic purposes. We can't really pin down any of the fault, any of the blame of modern
Muslims, on Islam itself, unless we can draw a link
from Muhammad and the Quran to what modern Muslims are doing. A legitimate link. So when you have people who
will point to all the battles, and at the bloodshed that happened between Muslims and around the world, the terrorist attacks, and they'll say, look, this is what Islam is, most Muslims today, will say,
no that is not what Islam is. These Muslims have hijacked Islam. They're making Islam look bad. That's the common Western
response to the terrorism that is occurring around the world today. When we talk about Muhammad's
life, Muhammad's teachings, we are talking about
the universally accepted origin of Islam. And so to be able to draw a link between what Muhammad taught
and what is going on today is it's a sine qua non,
really, of Apologetics here. You have to have that. At least the Quran, if
not Muhammad's life. So here's Muhammad's life in a nutshell. You've got him starting the Meccan period of
his ministry in 610 AD. Again, at that time he
spoke simply to his wife, and to his friend, and to his cousin, and a few other people. Not many, he wasn't
publicly proclaiming God. It wasn't until 613 that he started publicly
proclaiming Allah. And in the early Meccan ministry phase, you had about 40 people
who had accepted Islam. So between 610 to 617,
the numbers were about 40. Then there was a boycott in 617. What the Arabs of the time were doing, was they started to get together and to say, we're not going
to trade with this family. Now the family was the family that was led by Muhammad's
uncle, Abu Talib. Abu Talib was extremely
important to Muhammad for a majority of, a
large number of reasons. But primarily because Abu
Talib had a large hand to play in raising Muhammad. When Muhammad was born, at 570
AD, when Muhammad was born, his father had already died
so he was born to a widow. His mother then died when
he was six years old, and so he was an orphan at a young age. This might have a lot to do with how much compassion
he showed orphans. He then went to his grandfather's house, and his grandfather
died when he was eight. So two years later, his grandfather died. So Muhammad's going from
place, to place, to place. He settles with his uncle, and his uncle is the one who
is kind of his protector, kind of functioned as
his father, in a way. And so by the time you
have Muhammad preaching, he is preaching Monotheism
in a Pagan area. Understand again, a large part of the
commerce occurs in Mecca because people are coming
to worship all the gods. And if Muhammad is saying
there is only one God, he is going to alienate all these people that are coming from all
over to worship there. These were the people
who bring their trade, this is where the commerce happens. So if Muhammad attacks Polytheism, he's essentially jeopardizing
the commerce of the area, and so the Pagans in Mecca responded. Slowly but surely, they responded with different
degrees of persecution. [off-mic person sneezes] Bless you. According to the Muslims. in the year 617, they decided
to boycott the family, the family that was lead
up by Muhammad's uncle, because Muhammad's uncle was the one who was protecting Muhammad. If anyone tried to harm Muhammad, it would be up to the uncle or someone else in the
family to defend Muhammad. That's what families are for. That's how they worked. And so acting as Muhammad's protector, they allowed Muhammad to
successfully preach in Mecca until 617 AD. At that point, the rest of the Meccans decided to boycott the family. And so the family began to have to find alternate means for trade,
for food, for sustenance. In 619 AD, Muhammad's uncle dies. Muhammad's first wife
also dies the same year. It's unclear whether
this was a result or not of the boycott. But regardless, this is the most painful
year for Muhammad, 619 AD. His first wife, when he was
married to her, Khadija, he was 25 years old when
he got married to her. By this point he is 49. So he's married to her for 24 years, and he often reminisced
about his first wife. And he would tell his other wives later that she was the most
important one to him. During that time, he was monogamous. He was only married to Khadija. It wasn't until after Khadija that we see Muhammad practicing polygamy, in 619 AD, when Muhammad's uncle dies, all of a sudden he has lost protection, and now if someone hurts
him or tries to kill him, there will be no retribution. Muhammad starts looking for
an alternate means of safety. Ultimately he finds that in Medina, and so he flees to Medina in 622. 622 AD is the most important
date for the Islamic calendar. This is when Muhammad undergoes
the Hegira, or the Flight, by going to Medina, which was
at the time called Yathrib. When Muhammad went to Medina
it wasn't called Medina, it was called Yathrib. Him going there is what changed it. Or his going there, he going
there changed it to Medina. Medina was a city divided. It had three Jewish tribes,
and two Pagan tribes, so you had conflict
between Jews and Pagans. The Jews looked to Muhammad
as a fellow Monotheist, and the Pagans look to
Muhammad as a fellow Arab. And so Muhammad quickly,
and immediately actually, took control of Medina. He was given leadership, he was made the arbiter
and judge of Medina. And so when people had
issues and conflicts, they would go to Muhammad. Muhammad would decide them. Within a matter of months, the caravans that were leaving from Mecca came under siege by the Muslims. So according to early Muslim sources, most Muslims today by the
way, would not say this. But this is according
to early Muslim sources. The caravans leaving Mecca, the city where Muhammad had been, were under siege by Muslims in Medina. And often, Muslims who know that will say that was because they were
trying to get their stuff back. They had to flee to Medina, and the Meccans we're
now selling their stuff, so the Muslims trying
to get their stuff back. This led to the first major
battle, the Battle of Badr. During this battle,
according to the records, 313 Muslims we're fighting
a thousand Meccans. The Muslims had one
horse, just a few camels, they were poorly armored, no real warriors, or not many warriors, most of 'em were militia. Whereas the Meccans
brought a thousand people that were well armed, well trained, they had fought, and the
Muslims won the battle. This battle marks the
beginning of Islamic battles. Before this, you had
minor raids, nothing big. But at this point, you
have Islamic battles, and they begin to occur. And you see warfare entering
into Islamic theology, in a much more profound sense. Muslims are often very, very
proud of the Battle of Badr. They see this as a defining moment, where God shows through military power that Muhammad is ordained by
him, by Allah himself to win. However, the Battle of Uhud, which happened in the next
year, did not go quite as well. Muslims will often say that it was a tie. You look at the record though, it doesn't look so good for the Muslims. There were a lot of casualties. Muhammad himself was injured
during the Battle of Uhud, and it was a bad moment. The Battle of the Trench
did come to a stalemate. This was a few years later. Meccans came to put Medina under siege. Muslims had learned a trick of warfare, and had decided to build a
trench around their city, so the Meccans were unable
to get over the trench. However at this time, the third of the three tribes
of Jews in the city of Mecca, I'm sorry, the city of Medina, had tried to help the Meccans. They had tried to help
Meccans take over Medina. This is probably because the first two tribes had
been expelled from the city, and they were the last tribe left, and they were afraid of what
was gonna happen to them. But because the Battle of the
Trench ended in a stalemate, Muhammad had the capacity
to do whatever he wanted with the Medina Jews there. And according to history, Muhammad then beheaded all the adult men from the tribe of Jews. And he sold the women, the children, including the young boys, into slavery, and took their possession as booty. This marked a severe turn in attitude between Muhammad and Jews. Pretty much from this point on, Jews were not seen in a good light. Christians kind of worse
still, but not as much. After a few years, Muhammad
was able to win allies, tribes throughout Mecca, I'm sorry, throughout Arabia to his side, and he was able to march on
Mecca with 10 thousand soldiers. And so he was able to overcome Mecca with a host of soldiers at his side. At this time, the records
indicate that Muhammad showed a high degree of mercy. He forgave virtually everyone. People who did not want to be killed, who did not want to fight,
they could go into their homes, they could remain in their homes, or they could go to the
houses of certain people that Muhammad had named, or
they could go to the Gaba. And if they went to any of those places, they would be safe. If they were in the street,
or if they tried to fight, they would be killed. So with minimal bloodshed,
Muslims took over Mecca. At this time, there were
approximately nine people who, even though they sought clemency, Muhammad still killed them,
but that was just nine. The vast majority of people had mercy at the hands of Muhammad. Muslims often point to this event today to say that Muhammad was
the most merciful man who ever walked the Earth. Here's a group of people who led to the death of his
wife, the death of his uncle, who had tried to attack
him and persecuted him. And look, Muhammad showed them mercy. Isn't he the most merciful man? And there is a degree of mercy that we have to take into account here at this event, if
the records are accurate. For a few years Muhammad was back in Mecca for a short period of time. The records indicate
he went back and forth from Medina to Mecca, but he died ultimately in 632 AD. Any questions on history, Muhammad's life? Yes. >> Student: So can you go over the point about how he walked into a situation with Pagans and Jews
rustling with each other? How he got control that, [mumbles]. >> He was invited into the city, and I think he was seen
as a potential arbiter, so they both wanted him as
the one who would help out. [student speaking off-mic] >> So at this point he's settling some of the issues between the Polytheists and the Jews there. He's establishing his position, he's becoming to be a statesman. At first he was not a statesman at all. In Mecca he was simply a preacher. Here he begins to start
setting out rules, regulations. You see things changing as far as the direction people prayed, what direction they prayed. The laws became more
well-flayed out at this time. Between the first battle and the raids, he was still in a good
relation with the Jews. The change in the situation
there didn't happen until the next few years. Keep in mind though, that it's not long. That's about a two year period, and it was within the first
year, about 11 months in, that the first raid, the
Nakhla Raid, occurred. So it was about, that
period's about a year. We're going to talk tomorrow as well about the sources on Muhammad's life. Again, right now what I'm giving you is the way Muslims will
talk about Muhammad's life. Tomorrow we're going to go
into the historical Muhammad, and you're going to have
a different perception of virtually all of this. It's like going from physical
chem to organic chem. It's like, what just happened? [audience laughing] Yeah? [student speaking off-mic] >> No, there was a lot of the tribes, when they allied with him, it was kind of seen as a conquering. So a lot of these areas
weren't even fought for, people just allied with him. And ultimately when Muhammad dies, many of these tribes try to break away. Abu Bakr, his successor, has to initiate what I
call the Apostate Wars, 10 major battles where people were made to stick with Islam, so you could learn about
that if you'd like. But a lot of these were just allegiances that ultimately were consolidated
under Abu Bakr's reign. I notice I didn't tell you
what [foreign language] was. That was the three year period where Muhammad didn't preach publicly, and he didn't actually
receive much revelation at all, if any. It seems that after Muhammad
received his first revelation, he was unsure of his ministry. He didn't know what was going on, and it wasn't for a few years that he kind of gained his bearings. [student speaking off-mic] >> That is what a lot
of the Muslims will say, that by taking additional wives, he would create an allegiance
with an additional tribe. It's uncertain how many
wives Muhammad had. Numbers range from nine to 23. It depends on how you see concubines. Many Muslims say there's no such thing as concubines in Islam, and
so they were all his wives. Many will say no, those
were a lot of concubines. And so he had nine wives. But yeah, a lot of those relations were undertaken for political purposes, and that was common practice. Okay, so let's talk about the Hadith. Now you might be asking, Nabeel, where are you
getting a lot of this stuff about Muhammad and his life? What are the sources here? We're going to talk much more in-depth about the sources tomorrow, but for now what really
matters is what Muslims see as a potential source on Muhammad's life. And those are called the Hadith. The Hadith are collections
of sayings of Muhammad, and often subsumed into
that concept are the Sunnah, which were the actions of
Muhammad, or the practices. Muslims aspire to replicate Muhammad in his actions and sayings
as much as possible. They turn to these in
order to replicate Muhammad to the best of their ability. If you see Muslims with beards, and a lot of them have
beards and shaved mustaches, so you'll see they've got this big beard and a shaved mustache. That is because that's what Muhammad was supposed to have had, a large beard with shaved mustache. You'll see Muslim men often making sure that their pants don't
go below their ankles. That is because Muhammad
supposedly did not let his pants go below his ankles. Again, I told you about how my mom told me to walk in the bathroom
my left foot first. That's because that's how
Muhammad used to do it. How do you learn all this? Not through the Quran, through
Hadith, and through Sunnah. That is how you emulate his life, and you earn blessings by doing so. Again, the Quran told us Muhammad is a perfect exemplar, follow him. And Muslims take that to the Nth degree. A lot of them, not all of them, but a lot of them take
that to the Nth degree. And so they're trying to practice Islam by emulating Muhammad. He is their exemplar, and this
happens through the Hadith. Now the Quran doesn't
give a lot of details that are necessary for Islamic life. The Quran was supplemented
by oral tradition until those traditions were written down, and they were written down as Hadith. So for example the five daily prayers, how exactly do you pray them? What words exactly do
you pray when you bow, when you stand, et cetera? What about the words you pray
during the ceremonial washing? All of that comes from Hadith, it does not come from the Quran. How many prayers are there? The Quran only names three, but there are five daily prayers. It comes from the Hadith. So the Hadith by Muslims are seen as a necessary
component to Islam. There is a small faction of
Muslims called Gorani Muslims, and these are Muslims who
follow only the Quran. None of the Hadith, and they look very different
from most other Muslims. There's a debate going on right now in University of Toronto, well it was probably over a few hours ago. But it's between a man by
the name of Tony Costa, an amazing apologist,
and warrior for the lord, and he is debating a Gorani Muslim. So they have a position too,
and it's very, very different. Islam looks very different
if you only go off the Quran. Now the Hadith are not
a book you can go to, oh look, here all the Hadith. No, there's a bunch of different Hadith, and Muslims grade them accordingly. They call their, did I write this here? I'm not sure if I did. So various sects of Islam
follow different Hadith. The Shia, for example, do not follow the Sunni Hadith at all. No, they have their own books of Hadith. The Sunni Hadith are of different levels. There's the Sahih, which are considered the
most accurate Hadith, Sahih Muslim and Sahih Bukhari. And therefore if you're going
to converse with a Muslim and talk about Muhammad's life, it would be best to be well conversant with Sahih Bukhati and Sahih
Muslim, but there are others. For example, Sunan Abu Dawud is often considered the
third most trustworthy book. It's given the title
Sunan as opposed to Sahi because the author was attempting to collect the actions of
Muhammad, and not the sayings. And he did so based on
a different criteria than authenticity, which
is what the Sahi were for. The Musnad, for example, Musnad Ahmad, those are sayings based on
different companions of Muhammad. So according to this companion,
Muhammad said X, Y, and Z. According to this companion,
Muhammad said X, Y, and Z. They're listed accordingly in the Musnad. The thing about Hadith though, again we have to remember
that the society here was for the most part pre-literate. In order for the Hadith to be propagated, and to be considered trustworthy, you had to have the Hadith. So that's the saying
proper, like for example, Muhammad said these words you
know that's the saying proper. That's called the Matn, and then there's the list of people who transferred this Hadith. So Muhammad said it to such and such, who said it to such and such,
who said it to such and such, who said it to such and such,
who said it to me, this. That's called the Isnad,
the chain of transmission. That is essential for the
Ulum, for the sciences Hadith. Oh yeah, I do talk about that here. So Muslims say that there's a whole science
of understanding Hadith, that you have to grade the Hadith according to who said it,
how many people said it, was that person trustworthy? Are there multiple lines of people who remember this saying? And these Hadith were recorded, most of them about the Third
Century after Muhammad, so 200, to 250 years transpired between Muhammad and the Hadith. As you can imagine, there were hundreds of
thousands of fabricated Hadith. And Muslims agreed to that. They will say that there
were hundreds of thousands of Hadith that were fabricated, and that is why it's extremely
important to grade them and to know which ones are
accurate, and which ones are not. That is the science of Hadith, and if you go to some very
detailed commentaries on Hadith, you will see the grading. Is it Mutawatir, which means
as strong as it can be? Is it Da'if, which means
weak, or probably not true? Or is it Ahaad, which means there's only one
good line of transmission? There's all kinds of
gradings for the Hadith. And there's a whole
field of Hadith grading called the Ulum al-Hadith. The Hadith stand apart from biographies. Biographies are different,
those are called the Sida. They're not nearly as
important to Muslims. Muslims don't turn to the
Sida to learn about Mohammed. They turn to the Hadith for the most part. They do look at the Sida
but they can't trust them so they don't know how
much to believe them. That is the average Muslim. Now, scholars turn to Sida
all the time, Muslim scholars. They will turn to Sida all the time. Because it's their source
on Mohammed's life. But the average Muslim, they
try to stick with the Hadith and mainly sei bu jadi and second Muslim. Any questions on the Hadith? I can't understate how important the Hadith are for Islamic life. They're extremely important, this is how you get back to
Mohammed apart from the Koran. The Koran only mentions Mohammed by name four times, by the way. The Koran only mentions
Mohammed by name four times. It references him a lot
in the second person, you, but by name four times. If you wanna learn about
Mohammed you go to other sources. Yeah? >> You mentioned earlier, in a version about how you want to inject Hadith, that were harder to explain. Like, how does that
work when it seems like it's such a part of this lecture that it's so important to the faith. How does that line up with logistics? >> They often accept the Hadith
that defend their positions and they'll deny the Hadith that don't. Now we see that as
cherry picking and it is. But what they will see that as is, I received my teaching
on Islam from my imam. My imam did not teach me that. Therefore I don't think that's accurate. They might not verbalize it in that manner but the authoritative structure is extremely important for Muslims. As you can see from the Isnad, it really matters who you learn from. And so if you come up and
you show them this Hadith they've never seen they'll
probably turn around and say it's fabricated if it's something that damages their position because that's the defense that they have. Now you can pull the maneuver of saying, "Here's a book which has the Hadith, "and look, it says that it's trustworthy." It's [speaking in a foreign language] or it's [speaking in a foreign
language] or what have you. And then they'll say, "Well,
I don't trust that book." Because you have to understand, it's the authority
structure really matters. And we'll talk about this
a little bit tomorrow too but we often as evangelicals
put on protestant glasses and we, you know, the sola scriptura idea, we impute to a lot of others. And that, it's not the way
it works amongst Muslims. It's not sola scriptura,
you got the Hadith, you got the Imams, you got
the schools of thought. That's the way divine
knowledge is passed down. We have to remember that. And then when you were the
person bringing something up to them and you are probably
being seen as an adversary, why should they trust you when their imams don't agree with what you're saying? It really affects their epistemology. >> Student: Can you go
back a couple slides? Yeah, right there. >> Student: Why do they feel Aisha, is not one of the most trusted beings? Is that because they feel
ashamed that she wrote those? >> So you're referring
to the shia probably. >> Student: I suppose. >> The shia do not trust
anything Aisha said. And the reason why is because-- >> Student: Aisha is his youngest wife. >> Aisha, that's Aisha, yeah. >> Student: Okay, she wrote many-- >> She is called [speaking
in a foreign language], the mother of the believers. >> Student: Right. >> Mohammed pointed to her
as an extremely intelligent, this was his six year old bride. And so she was coming to being while he was doing a
lot of his initial work. She knew a lot about Mohammed's life. Shia don't like her. There was, the shia, okay,
I'll tell you the division. I probably should have already. So the Sunni Muslims are the ones who say that authority passed down from Mohammed through the umma, or
through the Muslim people to the next person. So they'll say Mohammed died, Mohammed died and left his successor, the umma chose Abu Bakr. They voted for him, or they chose him, appointed him, however. Abu Bakr was the next person. After Abu Bakr was Umar. And then after Umar was Uthman, and then after Uthman was Ali. Those are the four rightly guided caliphs. The Shia say that should
not be how it was. That should not have been how, that was not how it should
have been, there you go. That was not how it should have been. The, it should have passed
along the house of Mohammed. It should have gone through the bloodline. And so after Mohammed died, the next person should have been Ali. Ali is Mohammed's cousin. So they are, Shia means follower. They are followers of Ali. That's were the term comes from. During Ali's reign or
shortly before Ali's reign, I can't remember which, Aisha marched in battle against Ali. The numbers recorded are astounding, I'm not sure how accurate they are. But Aisha supposedly brought
30,000 men to the battlefield and Ali brought about 10,000
men to the battlefield. And Ali won the battle,
everyone agrees to that. And a lot of Muslim
blood was shed that day. It was Muslim marching against Muslim for the first time, if you don't count the apostate wars. And at about that time you
have significant tensions rising between the Sunni and the Shia and they officially get
established at the death of Ali. Around that time, there
was tension within Islam from the very early phases, though. You look at the Koran,
and it says repeatedly that there's a group of
people called the hypocrites. What are the hypocrites? These are Muslims, these are people who self identify as Muslim who are acting out against Mohammed. Mohammed calls them, the Koran
calls them the hypocrites because they say they're Muslim
but they don't act Muslim. But what does that tell us? You know, critically
speaking it tells us that from the beginning there
was dissension in Islam. And then aside from Abu Bakr, all three of the caliphs were killed. Umer, Uthman, and Ali were all killed at the hands of other people who considered themselves Muslim. So a lot of dissension early on. So Shia take a look at Aisha and you know, they love Ali, they follow Ali, Ali's the one after Mohammed and they say Aisha was his mortal nemesis. And so they do not trust her. Most Sunnis, though, they trust Aisha, really, really highly revere Aisha. You're welcome, ma'am. >> Student: Can you define
again some of the terms? >> Mutton, so the mutton
is the hadith proper, it's what the hadith says. So for example, there's
the hadith which says [speaking in a foreign language]. Your deeds are, no, what
does that mean again? Deeds are judged by their intentions. And so that's the hadith,
this is what Mohammed said, "Your deeds are judged
by their intentions." That's the mutton, the isnad is, you know, I heard this from such and such who heard it from such and such who heard it from such and such. So if you go to
sahihbukhari.com, for example, they only give you the mutton, they're not giving you the isnad. And Muslims wouldn't consider that enough, they would want to see both, sir? >> Student: But the mutton includes both the hadith and the sunan? >> Yes, so suna. >> Student: So it's not just a quote, it's the description of the act. >> Right, it could be either or, yeah. The term hadith is really been expanded to cover hadith and sunna. And mutton, yeah, mutton is
both, the proper for both. Any other questions on hadith? Extremely important to grasp, yeah. >> Student: The word for musnad, right? >> Yeah, musnad. >> Student: What does that mean? >> Musnad is a way of arranging hadith according to the companion who heard it. So for example, if you wanna
list out all the hadith that Aisha had transferred, you would put that under that. There's not that many musnad collections. The most famous one is Musnad Ahmed. >> Student: What is the
name of the biography? >> The earliest biography on Mohammed is called Sidat Rasulullah. Sidat is the word for
biography or life of, the Rasul, messenger, Allah, of Allah. Sidat Rasulullah. It was written by a man named Ibn Ishaq. Ishaq is I-S-H-A-Q, Ibn, I-B-N. Ibn Ishaq, earliest biography of Mohammed written approximately 150
years after Mohammed's death. We don't have it anymore. What we have is the remnants, saved by a man named Ibn Hisham. So Ibn Hisham saved some
of Ibn Ishaq's work. He then edited it and
he says he edited it. He said, "There was some stuff in here "that was just unbelievable
so I didn't copy it." And so then he has, what you can buy today is a translation of Ibn
Ishaq through Ibn Hisham. What I gave to the class
as required reading was an abridged version of Ibn Ishaq. You can find that online
if you go to Scribed. Scribed has everything, I don't know how Scribed is still online. Should be illegal, but it has everything. Yeah, I saw another question, yes? >> Student: If the wise preceded the compilation of the
hadith by 100 years, does that generate any interesting comment about the relative value to-- >> Oh yeah, I mean. >> Student: Prior to the change? >> Yeah, Muslims and
critical scholars of Islam all agree that there
is a lot of difficulty that is brought into the
whole hadith scientist, or the whole realm of hadith studies because of all the fabrications. Muslims have a different view, though. Muslims will view the
hadith as you can trust certain ones because
you can trust the Isnad. So if you have a trustworthy Isnad from multiple chains, then
you can trust the hadith. So Muslim scholars will
often analyze the Isnad and say, "This hadith is trustworthy." And they have compilations
of books like that. So for them it's not as much of a problem. Western scholars have had a different view for quite awhile now. What you had from the beginning
of critical scholarship on Islam in the west, you had what was called
the descriptive approach, and I'm using terms
borrowed from Frank Donner, who's a current Islam scholar. He says that there was
a descriptive approach at first, which basically,
they would relay the story of Mohammed, but they would, when it came to Hadith they would say, "The hadith aren't really historical. "There's some historical
things we can glean from them. "But they're more or less
for religious purposes, "not for historical purposes." As the studies progressed people began to wrestle more and more with the hadith and with the traditional
way that the story was told. The next field of studies in Islam was the source critical,
so I'm talking about western scholarship for the most part. Source critical studies began to take over the descriptive approach. And what they tried to do
was they tried to analyze layers of hadith, compare
them with one another, and they tried to import
non-Muslim sources and use those for corroboration. As they went further and further they realized that you have, the whole source critical approach has this presupposition that writings were the initial form of a message. Whereas we know that's not the case. The message in the case of Islam was almost entirely oral
for hundreds of years. And so people began to
kind of evolve their view. It went from a source critical approach to a tradition critical approach. And when you got to that point people began to realize there is not much about the hadith that we can
actually pin on Mohammed. And that's what bore out
the skeptical approach, which is espoused by a
lot of scholars today. And we'll talk about all that tomorrow. So yeah, we're gonna go a lot more in depth with that tomorrow. You're welcome. Okay, let's do the last section and then we'll leave the last few minutes for questions. Islamic law, now I'm not gonna tell you what Islamic law teaches. I'm gonna tell you what it is. Because it's really hard to tell you what Islamic law teaches when a lot of people disagree on it. The law itself is called sharia, which means path to water. In other words, this is the
way you're gonna receive life. This is God's law for mankind. Now figuring out what sharia is is a process of fiqh,
fiqh is jurisprudence. Fiqh is, well the system of fiqh is what people use in order to determine what sharia teaches. So sharia is kind of God's law and fiqh is how you figure it out. It's based on three or four components, depending on who you ask. The first component is the Koran. As we know, the Koran is the essential, it's the crux of Islam for all Muslims. I don't know a single
Muslim who denies the Koran. Then you have the hadith. The hadith are the second component. And again, some people consider
some hadith trustworthy, they consider other hadith untrustworthy. And you have lots of
disagreements on the hadith. Therefore you're gonna have
lots of disagreement on sharia. Sharia's gonna look different to you depending on what hadith you subscribe to. And how you interpret
the Koran accordingly. Then you got ijman, or the
consensus of scholarship. Understanding again
that Islam doesn't work in this kind of sola scriptura sense. You've got a line of
teachers, schools of thought where you'll generally
check your jurisprudence off of, if you're a Muslim jurist. By the way, Muslim
jurists are called fuqaha, F-U-Q-A-H-A, and they're the ones who make these calls. The average Muslim is not
able to do any of this. They'll look at you, if you try to do any of this and they'll say, "Who do you think you are? "You haven't studied Islam the way a Sikh "or the fuqaha have. "How dare you think you can
understand what Islam teaches? "You have to ask them." So the ijman, the consensus of scholarship usually follows lines of
thought, schools of thought. Nowadays we're seeing a change in that but we'll talk about that on Saturday. Some people consider there
to be a fourth component to fiqh and that's called
kios, which is reasoning, reasoning by analogy, et cetera. So using these principles
they will try to determine what certain, how a certain
person should react. So for example, if a husband commits a certain transgression against a wife, can that wife divorce her husband? She would have to go to a mufti or one of the other fuqaha and ask them, "Am I allowed to divorce him now?" And they will make a decision. That decision, by the
way, is called a fatwa, F-A-T-W-A, fatwa, so, that is how it occurs. You aren't allowed to do this yourself. You go and get decisions, now those decisions are never binding. A Muslim can take that decision
and go to a different mufti and say, "Can you give me a decision?" And they can keep going until they get the decision they want. Often they don't do that, though. They'll stick with the
decision that they're given. The sharia law courts in Britain, I'm sure you're familiar. You have sharia law courts in Britain, they mostly deal with marital issues. The vast majority of
what they're dealing with are divorce cases. And again, they're not binding. But Muslims are generally
pressured into going there to get a Muslim decision
from their members, there fellow members of their circles. Traditionally there have been four major schools of Sunni thought. You've got the shafi'i,
in no particular order, the shafi'i, the hambali,
the hanafi, and the monoki. These four schools are
followed by various people, various levels, they teach variant things, but only slightly so. For example, I forget which school it was but one school of thought says that if you become an apostate
and you deny Islam, then you are to be killed on the spot. Another school says you are to
be given three days to repent and if after those three
days you don't repent then you're to be killed. Minor disagreement, not too major. One school, for example, will say whether a woman has any
say in whom she marries. Can a woman say no, can she say yes. Another, one school will say yes, another school will say no. So not huge theological differences here. More or less minor ones. People begin shopping, they
began shopping between schools to get decisions they wanted. That was looked at negatively for awhile. As we'll discuss more on Saturday, these schools have begun
to dissipate though, and we're seeing a revolution
in the way Islam works. One second, you see other
schools of thought as well. Again, these are the four
major schools of Shia thought. There are three major schools of, I'm sorry, those are
the four major schools of Sunni thought. There are three major
schools of Shia thought. The last one being the
largest there, the Imami. And then you got the Zaidi
and the Ismaili as well. And then you have other
schools altogether. Again, when you're
talking about someone like a Korani person, they're gonna have an entirely idiosyncratic view. Same with a lot of Suffis. Question? >> Student: Within the
Sunni schools of thought, what is the school that says you can kill a person and
what's the school that says, give them time to repent, and
then the school that says-- >> Within the Sunni, or? >> Student: You said that in the Sunni-- >> Right. >> Student: If there's an apostate-- >> Yeah, I don't remember
which one's which. >> Student: Which ones do that? >> Yeah, I don't remember
which one's which. I could look that up
for you if you'd like. But I don't remember which one teaches that you have to kill immediately and which one says you
can wait three days. That, you're usually
getting into some pretty detailed study at that point. I generally focus on what the hadiths say and not so much how they
interpret the hadith. So I try to stick with
the primary sources. This is, you're getting into secondary source literature here. Yeah? >> Student: Maybe you could
answer this now or later. You did mention that
we're gonna get into it at a later class. This is regarding the shaiha and what's enough for divorce, and when to stone her or
a few days to come back. Do you see that happening
here in the states? Because I heard that
Americans have the wrong ones across North America. Do you see it coming up more nowadays? >> What was it specifically? >> Student: Allowing sharia
law to take precedence here in the states, if it does, what if somebody would
want to stone somebody because they did something-- >> Well, so in the case of sharia courts, I think we can see a lot of precedence in the United Kingdom
for the United States. So what what Muslims are doing in the UK, they're beginning to do here. And so I think that's
a, just a sheer function of numbers, demographics. I don't think that they
have some grand scheme. I just don't think it's, I mean, you might have some people
who are networking with others but generally speaking, Muslims aren't part of a grand scheme. What you have in the UK is, the Muslims were able to
convince the government to allow sharia courts
mainly for civil decisions, not for criminal cases. So when it comes to beheading
or something like that we're talking about criminal issues. We're talking here about
divorce, inheritance, you know, property rights,
stuff like that, civil issues. That's mostly what the sharia
courts in the UK cover. And again, the vast
majority of that is divorce. In the US if sharia were to become the norm, in some way,
shape, or form, who knows, amongst Muslims, then we would probably see something similar. I don't know if you know,
ICNA just started a, the Islamic Council, Islamic Council, the IC, Islamic Council-- >> Student: Of North America. >> Of North America, thank you. ICNA just started a campaign to make sharia more palatable to Americans. So they want to ultimately
work in that direction. You have people on the
opposite side of the spectrum who are trying to stop sharia
from entering into the US. Oklahoma tried to pass
legislation on that. The main reason for all this is because we've seen American courts
use Islamic precedence. For example, there was
a case in New Jersey where a woman complained
to the authorities that she was being beaten by her husband. The judge ruled in her husband's favor because it's allowed in Islam. That was a huge deal, that was overturned at the next court thankfully. But you know, that issue
became a forefront issue. So that's a very interesting point. As far as sharia is concerned,
we've seen in Europe that the sharia proposition
that you cannot condemn Islam, that you cannot criticize Islam. We've seen that make it into the UN. The UN has passed a non-binding resolution saying you're not allowed
to criticize Islam. So it's becoming a real thing. Again, it's more political. We'll hold our, we'll hold
our conversation on that. >> Student: Sorry to bring it up. >> No, that's all right. But it is an important issue, ma'am? >> Student: What happens in cases where fathers killed children that are apostates? >> They've, yep, they've killed children for all kinds of reasons. Now honor killings are more
loosely connected to Islam than apostasy killings. There is a whole conference
that's gonna happen on this issue in the next week. It's called the Jessica Mokdad Conference, it's gonna happen up in Michigan. And specifically, it's named after a girl who was killed by her
step-father, I believe. It addresses these issues. It talks about how, how honor
killings are related to Islam. At no point does the, do the hadiths say kill your child if they dishonor
you, or anything like that. But you do have things
like, kill the homosexual or kill the one who's causing mischief. That's in the Koran, even. You know, kill the apostate. That's all over hadith, and
so you have this parallel where you're supposed to kill people who dishonor Islam under
specific circumstances. What a lot of the folk
do who try to defend an Islamic basis for honor killings is they say, "Look, Islam teaches "that in order to handle these
kinds of misappropriations "of Islamic teaching, Islam teaches "that you're supposed to kill them." And so it's easy to extrapolate that to, you're becoming westernized, you're becoming less and less rigorous in your Islamic faith,
therefore you can be killed. But there's a whole
conference on this issue. It's a tragic issue but I'm not so sure, just to summarize my position, I'm not so sure you can
directly connect that to Islam as opposed to folk Islam. I'm not convinced one way or the other. I haven't taken a stand on that. >> Narrator: Biola University offers a variety of Biblically-centered
degree programs ranging from business to ministry
to the arts and sciences. Visit biola.edu to find out how Biola could make a difference in your life.
