The First Wisdom

 من علامة الاعتماد على العمل نقصان الرجاء عند وجود الزلل

A sign that one is relying on one's deeds is the decrease in hope when one makes a mistake

"When you have reached a firm decision, put your trust in Allah." [3:159]

Alhamdulilah, a  translation of Sheikh Ramadan Al-Bouti's, may Allah have mercy on him, commentary on the first hikmah of Imam Ibn Attaillah is now available from the English Naseem Al-Sham site. It can also be downloaded as a PDF file by clicking on the link at the bottom of the page.

And with Allah is every success.

The Adab of the Mufti

Dar Al-Hadith, Damascus, where Imam Al-Nawawi used to teach

Alhamdulilah, Chapter 5 of the soon-to-be-published book The Etiquettes of the Scholar and the Learner, which is a translation of the introduction to Imam Al-Nawawi's Al-Majmu', may Allah have mercy on him, has been published by the Journal for Islamic Sciences and is also available for download from the English Naseem Al-Sham site. This chapter deals specifically with the etiquettes of the mufti and the mustafti, i.e. the one seeking a fatwa.

Insha'Allah, the book itself will be published within the coming months, and with Allah is every success.

UPDATE (15/08/2019): Chapter 5 is now available here.

The Khilafah Issue

Surat At-Tawba 9:122

Alhamdulilah, Al-Hajj Abu Ja'far Al-Hanbali has written a very insightful article on the topic of the Khilafah, explaining why so many groups and organisations have failed to bring it about since its demise. The simple reason is that establishing or reestablishing the Khilafah is not the prerogative or responsibility of the layman but rather that of the highest-ranking scholars. Thus, when laymen attempt to accomplish that which is beyond their mandate, Allah is not with them.

As for the highest-ranking scholars, they did meet after the demise of the Ottomans and the conclusions of that meeting have been translated for the first time into the English language:

Grand Meeting Regarding the Collapse of the Khilafah (PDF)

Grand Meeting Regarding the Collapse of the Khilafah (Meeraath)

And with Allah is every success.

Madness is Rare in Individuals

Book Review: The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements by Eric Hoffer (New York: Harper Perennial, 2010)

Blurb: A stevedore on the San Francisco docks in the 1940s, Eric Hoffer wrote philosophical treatises in his spare time while living in the railroad yards. The True Believer –the first and most famous of his books – became a bestseller when President Eisenhower cited it during one of the earliest televised press conferences. Completely relevant and essential for understanding the world today, The True Believer is a visionary, provocative look into the mind of the fanatic and a penetrating study of how an individual becomes one.

The author: Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) was self-educated and lived the life of a drifter through the 1930s. After Pearl Harbor, he worked as a longshoreman in San Francisco for twenty-five years. He is the author of ten books, including The Passionate State of Mind, The Ordeal of Change, and The Temper of Our Time. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1983 and died later that year.

This book first came to my attention in 2010, after the failed IPCC summit on climate change in Copenhagen in December 2009, followed by the “climategate” emails of the preceding months, had all of a sudden cast doubt on what was arguably the most significant mass movement of the age. The scare was not quite what is had been hyped up to be, but certain people, even to this day, still cling doggedly to the belief that the world is warming up and mankind is primarily to blame, especially through our emission of carbon dioxide. Back in 2010, I noticed that such people were being labelled as “true believers”, and the purport was that such people’s faith never wavered in the slightest, regardless of the ever-emerging cracks or even overwhelming evidence that what they had called for and advocated no longer held up under scrutiny.  For further details, one had to read Eric Hoffer’s book, which was first published in 1951.

In previous blog posts, it has been pointed out the truth is not something that everyone is sincerely seeking, and the proof is that the majority of humanity lives and dies upon other than Islam. Therefore, demonstrating that something is undoubtedly true is not always enough to convince someone, because it is not minds and intellects that are diseased; it is hearts. Furthermore, this book was first mentioned on this blog in relation to a post about the religiosity of the AGW movement, and the lady who appears in the debate with Viscount Monckton would fit the description of the “true believer” perfectly. Again, one can see that the truth is not the primary motivator.

The College Conspiracy Scam

This documentary discusses several important points, including:

• Why higher education in the US is a corporatist racket
• Why tuition fees continue to rise, i.e. government subsidies
• The crippling debt that students accumulate and how this debt is preventing young people from saving money and investing, especially in gold and silver.
• The link between higher education and the legal industry
• The dearth of farmers, miners and other productive members of the economy due to greater desire among young people to be bankers and lawyers
• The lack of skills that college and university courses actually provide and why an apprenticeship or work experience would be far better
• The decreasing value of university degrees due to their increased prevalence
• The future of education: online learning

An Epidemic of Irresponsibility

A transcript of this video can be found here.

Thomas Sowell explains the how the lack of personal responsibility is the path that leads to dictatorship, because as individuals become more and more reckless and irresponsible the nanny state has to step in to "take care of them". Once it is easy to blame externalities and never oneself for one's problems, the finger can then be pointed at the nebulous entity called "society", which basically means that the state can and should use its coercive powers to bring about the desired utopia in which no one has to feel responsible for their actions.

Thomas Sowell further explains this phenomenon here and here. 

What Prof. Sowell is saying dovetails nicely with what is called the Peltzman Effect, named after University of Chicago economist Sam Peltzman:



In brief, the safer people feel the more recklessly and irresponsibly they will behave, as explained very well in this blog post. This is another example.

One only has to reflect on various state services to see examples of the Peltzman Effect. For example, in London there is a special ambulance, aptly called "the booze bus", that picks drunks up off the street. Some of the people these paramedics pick up are women:

Not a pretty or dignified sight, but more dangerous and disturbing is that the girl is easy prey for a passing attacker. Paramedic Brian Hayes shakes his head: "Look at the state of her. These young women just don't realise what risks they're taking when they go out and get smashed. They're so vulnerable."

But how will these young women realise the risks they're taking if the nanny state is always there to take care of them? Isn't the very existence of the booze bus encouraging this type of behaviour? Without it, the very real threat of being mugged or raped would dissuade women from acting so irresponsibly. In the short-sighted vision of the state, citizens are being "taken care of", but the long-term effect is that they are being infantalised.

The wider problem of state-sponsored healthcare is that it generally leads to irresponsible behaviour in terms of lifestyle and eating habits. If one never has to pay directly (i.e. as opposed to via taxes) for a visit to the doctor or a stay in hospital, the incentive to keep oneself healthy is greatly diminished. When people have to pay directly for such things, you will notice how much more concerned they are about eating the right foods, dressing properly and maintaining a generally healthy lifestyle.

This attitude also extends to schools, as parents can now blame teachers for their children's vile behaviour. While teaching at an "Islamic" school in the UK almost a decade ago, I often received complaints from parents about how their children were misbehaving...at home. For example, one parent complained that his son didn't wake up for the fajr prayer, while another said that while his son behaved during the school day, he was not the same when he arrived home. I responded by asking this father, "Do you ever go out with your son and spend time with him?" The father responded with an incredulous look on his face, "I work seven days a week!" Obviously, in his mind, anything beyond providing his son food, clothing and shelter was not his responsibility, so it can't be his fault that his 14-year-old son smokes, skips classes, only prays when monitored and told to etc. A boy like that may very well become a pimp and drug dealer later on, but again, this would be the fault of his teachers, his classmates, the government, "society" etc., but never the two people who brought him into this world.

Allah says:

"Safeguard yourselves and you families from a Fire whose fuel is men and stones." [Taḥrīm 66:6]

In short, we are responsible for ourselves and our families. We can't blame others. To many of us it may be instinctual to place safety nets in as many places as possible, but in most cases those very safety nets are the cause of the problem. The attitude that "someone else will do it" or "someone else will clean up the mess", or "pick up the bill", must die and die hard. It should have no consideration whatsoever in any of our personal decisions, i.e. decisions that effect us directly, from major decisions such as what to study at university and whom to marry and start a family with to relatively minor ones such as whether to eat certain foods or to be at a certain place at a certain time.

We must learn and understand that our actions have consequences, and this valuable lesson must be passed on to our children.

Related Posts:

Human Livestock
Good Intentions

Hikma 185: Speaking About the Revealed Law Without Knowledge and Sincerity

With Sheikh Muḥammad Saʿīd Ramaḍān Al-Būṭī, may Allah have mercy on him

ربما برزت الحقائق مكسوفة الانوار

اذا لم يؤذن لك فيها بالاظهار

Book Release: Right Livelihood and the Common Good: Three Classics from the Islamic Tradition

This special volume includes three texts:

Imam Al-Shaybani's Kitab Al-Kasb

Imam Al-Ghazali's Kitab Adab Al-Kasb wa Al-Ma'aash

Imam Al-Lubudi's Kitab Fadl Al-Iktisab

Please click here for further details. The volume is also available from Wardah Books.

What Every Muslim is Obligated to Learn

A translation of this fatwā from Naseem Al-Sham

Question:

I’m an adult,[1] twenty-five years old…am I obliged to learn the rules for reciting the Qurʾān[2] as well as fiqh or are they sunnah?[3] As a young Muslim, what is the minimum that I am obligated to learn?

Answer (from Sheikh Rushdī Salīm Al-Qalam):

Praise be to Allah, and He suffices, and peace be upon His Chosen Messenger:

To proceed:

It is obligatory upon every human being to know what he is obliged to learn in order to carry out his prayers, his zakāt, his fasting and his Ḥajj,[4] as these are all individual obligations. The person who prays must have proficiency in the Fātiḥah and well as some sūrahs through which his prayer is validated. Likewise, with other matters of fiqh, it depends on what is needed. Thus, the merchant must know the rulings regarding trade,[5] usury[6] and partnerships[7] before entering the market. The person who does not own any wealth is not compelled to know the details of zakāt with regards to himself, and all rulings must be learned from Muslims who are proficient in such matters and specialise therein.[8]

---

[1] (tn): bāligh. The source for the picture is here.

[2] (tn): Ar. al-tajwīd (please see this fatwā)

[3] (tn): i.e. recommended in the Revealed Law, which is synonymous with words like mandūb and mustaḥabb.

[4] (tn): For the Shāfiʿīs, the obligation includes ʿUmrah. Please see Al-Baqarah 2:196 as well as Sūrat Al-Tawbah 9:3, in which Allah refers to Ḥajj as Al-Hajj Al-Akbar, or the greater Ḥajj. If there is a greater Ḥajj then there must be a great Ḥajj, or Al-Hajj Al-Kabīr, which would be ʿUmrah. Thus, both Ḥajj and ʿUmrah must be performed once in a Muslim’s lifetime.

[5] (tn): Ar. al-bayʿ

[6] (tn): Ar. al-ribā

[7] (tn): Ar. al-sharikah

[8] (tn): i.e. Muslims who are qualified to teach such matters

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Clips from the film Fracknation:





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