Hey American Muslims...

Awesome video. I only wish there were more views.


I've attended lectures of Imam Suhaib Webb, Imam Zaid Shakir, Shayk Hamza Yusuf, Imam Abdul Hakim Murad, and Yasir Qhadi (who is from Houston). They are probably the best examples of Muslim leaders in America. It's funny that most of the people in the video are converts to Islam and have became some of the greatest scholars in today's era.

 

Thanks for posting this. If only all their scholars were as reasonable as these guys.

Out of curiosity, question to our muslim posters, do any of the guys in this clip have a "high" authority among muslim clerics? Thanks.

 

very high.

 

In America and UK, very high indeed.

Many of the scholars in the video studied for many years in North Africa, Egypt, Syria, Medina, etc. from teachers who have even "higher" authority but may not have even been heard of in America.

 

I concur.

 

Next you should do one about a black Democrat that doesn't hate white people. LOL.

 

Thing is, the real "scholars" all preach the same peaceful message because to be called a scholar, you actually have to understand what the quran preaches.

Those who are preaching violence aren't "scholars", they're simply evil leaders who don't know any better. Calling them scholars is a disgrace to actual scholars because those people fail to understand the central message of Islam. The Quran states unequivocally That the most severely punished crime a humanbeing could do is to kill an innocent soul. Period. There is no qualification that comes afterward. The innocent soul can be christian, hindu, hell, even atheist.

Ignorance and undirected anger are what's causing all the mess. Those "extremists" almost exclusively come from a very poor socioeconomic status in oppressive countries that are incredibly difficult to live in. They literally cannot make sense of why in the hell they are doomed to a life this miserable, so they revolt against everybody, and to give their new found life style a meaning, they spin religion to suit their message. It's really sad.

What's also sad is that I can see a lot of parallels between those groups and the new "tea party" movement in the U.S. Of course, it would be silly to compare the tea partiers to them straight out because the tea partiers haven't done anything evil on the large scale. But the two qualities exhibited by extremists I mentioned earlier --Ignorance and undirected anger-- can easily be spotted in any tea party rally. That's why I think it is very important to educate the masses and stop the ignorance, because years upon years of ignorance and undirected anger could lead to something very bad.

 

In fact, a lot of them are the same people you will see giving lectures at Islamic conference's like ISNA and ICNA year after year. Very knowledgeable and intelligent people.

 

Another thing, what these people stated in this video is what a lot of posters on this board have said as well, repeatedly. But I guess this holds more value since they are scholars and not laymen.

 

It would be interesting to see if they have any ideas on how to deal with those that give a bad name to their religion...how to diminish their influence and significance.

 

Well I know trying to fight fire with fire is not working. Best way imo is to take a disadvantage and turn it into an advantage. Instead of us buying bombs, buy food. Let's see how effective these "anti-scholars" are when the people they are trying to manipulate no longer have empty burning stomachs.

Again, the trick is how to do something like this in a practical manner in this complicated web of issues.

 

I do not doubt that socio-economic factors play a role, but some suicide bombers and hate preachers in the past were far from poor. They also weren't from those countries. I think it might be a bit too easy to blame it solely on socio-economic factors.

 

Very high. Ditto to what moose said as well about Scholars like Yasir Qadhi (a Houston native), Zaid Shakir, Hamza Yusuf, and others in their niche.

Unfortunately, the numerous scholars who have come out to condemn terrorism havent gotten much play in the media.

In 08, 20,000 scholars signed a joint statement from Dar Ul Uloom Deoband

And its not just them. There are literally thousands of Islamic scholars who've condemned terrorism well before 9/11 and continue to do so. Unfortunately, what happens is that someone comes forth with a talking point- in this case, "where are all the muslim scholars/organizations in condeming this?", and at that point there's no possible way to refute it.

In any case, I applaud the organizations behind the video effort as well as the individuals that took part in putting together the message.

 

Well here's the thing.

The word "scholar" is meaningless.

There are a few types of people you should know about:

- The original scholars. These are essentially the early followers of Islam who went into the philosophy (aka Aqeeda) of it. They discussed things like "Is the Quran created or has it always existed?". Within the Sunni sect, the branches of philosophy are Athari, Ashari and Maturidiya. Every Sunni has to subscribe to one of these.

- The later scholars. These are scholars who at some point decided to agree to disagree. Each one's legacy is now referred to as a "school of thought". I know that within the Sunni sect, there are Malikis, Shafii, Hanbali and Hanafi. These are legal schools of "thought" rather than philosophical. Every Sunni basically has to subscribe to one of these schools of thought. This will dictate things such as "should my beard be 1 inch long or 2 inches?". Day-to-day kind of stuff.

- The Shaikhs. These are the ones you see 99% of the time. These are people who have studied Islam and will research text and give lectures to people. It's like a bachelors in Islam. The cute little twist is that you only become a Shaikh if the Shaikh who taught you gives you a letter of approval. Studying Islam through an academic institution is extremely marginalized. You don't have "street cred" until you get that letter.

- The Muftis. Muftis are people who can make religious rulings aka fatwas. They are the equivalent of a judge for Islamic shari3a. They can pass law where it hasn't been passed before, and create precedent. They can give advice on how to interpret things, sometimes based on how they "feel" about it. I intensely oppose this practice. This is like a post-graduate thing after you become a Shaikh. You need approval to get this.

- The A'alem. These are the most knowledgeable people. These are also the people you rarely see. This is like the PhD + lifetime experience in Islam. I've found that these are the most tolerant of the group, even though I still don't like what they preach. They're the people who know every minute detail about Islam, Judaism, Christianity, philosophy, etc. The amount of information required basically ensures that you can't become one before the age of 50 or 60 (assuming you started early). You need approval to get this.

So when you say "scholar", it's not really as simple as it sounds. Sorry I'm sure what I've written is extremely incoherent but I haven't slept in 40+ hours lol. Just trying to point out that the word scholar is too vague to be able to pass judgement.

Hamza Yusuf has a university in California I believe. He's trying to eliminate this power structure which does not encourage any development. I think his university is called Zaituna Institute.

Hamza Yusuf is probably the only conservative Muslim I actually like. He's very smart, very sociable and a good speaker. It is rare to find an English speaking Shaikh with as much info as he does - which is why he is so popular I think. He studied over here for a while as well, he's been all over the Middle East.

 

Exactly. We are not better people. It's just about education, poverty, starvation, political conditions, etc.

 

I agree that it isn't ALL socio-economic factors. But I think it is MOST of it. Islam has been around for a while and if the root cause of the issue was religion, then wouldn't you expect the history books to be filled with nothing but a list wars/battles/acts of terrorism in the name of Islam.

The violence you've seen in the name of Islam is fairly recent. I can point to 2 events that started the chain reaction to 9/11. One is the Israel/Palestine issue and the other is the aftermath of the Russian-Afghan war. And the former was localized in the middle east for the most part. The combo of the two is what really drove things to the way they are currently.

And every organization has their fringe. The fringe really had nothing to work with until the two events mentioned above. Imagine what would happen to Toycen if CNN reported positive proof that aliens exist. He'd be all over the Hangout trying to convince us that Aliens are actually in control of everything. And if our economy was in the sh!tter like Afghanistan, he may get .001% ( ) of us to agree.

 

Well, they did manage to plant a few undercover aliens in the NBA for a while.

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