Knowledge or Just Knowing What Scholars Said?

Today look quick.

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Why should.

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The yesterday. This for us many times before is of what people of justice knowledge are. said a right said something said is that knowledge think about the question is that knowledge it's knowledge of what a sheer said but is it knowledge? The answer is no. Now if if you and and this is important why because look how this is going to play out. I come and I say for instance to here is here I say he said the following and counters and said but I me said the following right then comes into the discussion and he says but I im Ahmed Hel said this And then brother Makoud comes and he says but Abu Hanifh said this. So now we've got four opinions. This is hypothetical four opinions and all of us has presented the statement of a respective imam of the im of Islam. So now where do we go from here? How do we know which one is right and which one is wrong? Who's correct? If this is knowledge, then we've got a big problem because knowledge and the truth is only one. There's no two truths. There cannot be two opposing statements and both of them be fundamentally true. The truth is one. So these statements here if we do not remedy this kind of situation what will our discussion devolve into eventually it will devolve into yeah but Abu Hanifh is the first one and his med is the biggest. Yeah, but I im Malik is Imm. Yeah, but refined Im Malik's Mab. Yeah, but Imm Ahmed is more knowledgeable in narration and he took from all of them. Yeah, that's true. But she did this. No, but Malik did this. No, but she said this. No, but I im Ahmed this. We're not discussing knowledge anymore. The issue is no longer at hand. Now what is at hand is us either trying to raise up our respective person or put down the others. There's no way we can come to an agreement or a conclusion in this way. This is not a discussion of knowledge. Allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala warns us about this. He says subhanahua.

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He says, "Oh you who have believed, obey Allah." Listen to the wording. "Obey Allah and obey his messenger and the people of authority amongst you." And if you differ on anything, the wording here in.

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He says, "And if you differ on anything big or small, major or minor, then refer it back to Allah and his messenger." This is knowledge. So Allah's wording here is obey Allah. Listen how he repeats the verb, right? The command. Obey Allah and obey his messenger and those in authority amongst you. He doesn't repeat the word obey in the third one because obedience of Allah and his messenger is fundamental and obedience of those of authority is subject to obedience to Allah and his messenger. It's not the same level of authority. And if you differ on anything, then you refer it back to Allah and his messenger. How do we refer it back to Allah? What's meant by that? The Quran. How do we refer it back to the messenger? What's meant by that? His sunnah sallall.aii wasallam. This is knowledge. And so what is the definition of knowledge? knowledge. Very simple definition is knowing the truth with evidence. Or if we want to say what is knowledge in the Quran and knowledge. When Allah says knowledge in the Quran, knowledge in the Sunnah, what is meant by knowledge? It is knowing Allah, knowing his messenger, knowing the religion or the legislation of Islam with evidence. This is the critical differentiating description here and that is it's not just knowing Allah but knowing him with evidence. We all know that Allah is we all know that right the allseeing he sees all what's the evidence for that Allah says indeed Allah is the all hearing allseeing now this is knowledge once I have this evidence now it is knowledge in this issue I have knowledge that's what knowledge is without evidence this is not knowledge now back to our original example we have he said we have Malik said we have Abu Hanifh said we have Ahmed said this is knowledge of what they said But why they said it that is what is knowledge and these things knowing the mahib and knowing the opinions and the of the scholars this is something that runs in the same vein as knowledge but it on its own alone is not knowledge. So when we differ, if we are differing in this way, this she said this, this said that, this is not knowledge and this is not an evidence in front of Allah and this is not an argument in front of Allah. That's why Allah set it up in the following way. Obey Allah and obey his messenger. What if I don't know what Allah said on this particular issue? I don't know what his messenger said on this particular issue. And those in authority amongst you, who are those in authority amongst us? the people of knowledge. In this example, the the companions understood this statement, those of authority amongst you as being two types. Remember we mentioned this before. There are the the imam I im of the book, Imam of the iron, Imam of the of knowledge of the pen, imam of the sword. These are the two types of imams. those who have physical authority and those who have legislative authority. Knowledge, the people of knowledge and the people who rule over us, those in authority. And so who are those in authority in a discussion of knowledge? The scholars. Those who know the evidence for the issue at hand. That is the person of knowledge. Right? Otherwise, we cannot ever get anywhere with this. She said, "No, this Shia said," right? And we see this a lot. You see this often where, for instance, we'll have a narration or a verse or an issue and someone will go and look on the internet and come back and say, "Well, this Shia said this and this Shia said that and this Shia said." This is not evidence. This is not knowledge. This in itself is not inherent evidence. Right? Now, what happens if we're in a position where we don't know? Allah says, ask the people of knowledge if you do not know. And so the way that it was always to be set up is that essentially the Muslim reads the Quran. Essentially the Muslim reads the Sunnah of the prophet sallall.aii wasallam. Every individual Muslim is acquainted with the Quran and Sunnah as much as he is able to. But each group, each community, they are to have people of knowledge amongst them. And when something occurs or some difference or some issue arises, they refer to that person of knowledge. They don't refer to a random book. They don't refer to this she said this or this sheh said that. They refer to the physical person of knowledge amongst them. and he guides them through the issue. Right? This is how it is to be set up. And if we do this, what happens? We start to become a collective. We now start to become united upon knowledge and united around the people of knowledge and the people of authority amongst us. Right? This is how each community is to function. Unfortunately, what we see a lot of today is each person is running off looking and reading their own thing and each person has their own way and following their own thing. And this was never meant to be in this way. There's no way to unite if each person is his own imam and each person is his own person of knowledge and each person is his own scholar and whenever something comes up I'm just going to read a little article about it or I'm going to read a few issues about it and then run with it. That can't work that way. There are many of us here, most of us actually and every one of us is probably an expert in something. We have mashallah community of professionals, educated professionals. We have doctors, we have engineers, we have architects, we have software engineers right here sitting right now with us. Right? All of you are professional in some capacity in some field. You know from your own experiences the difference between reading an article or a paragraph on something and having intimate knowledge of the inner workings of that particular field. Correct? for instance, I could take one verse or one narration from the the Sunnah, right? And I could say this is what this is supposed to be. However, expertise comes into play when a person has thousands of narrations, all of the verses of the Quran, decades of knowledge and research, and now they understand the whole picture, how this one narration or this one verse fits in to the bigger, greater picture. Correct? There's a difference between a person who can do an oil change on his own car, right? And a person who understands exactly what this oil does, where it goes into, where it's coming out of, what , you know, look at the oil that's coming out and can diagnose the the vehicle, listen to something and hear a clicking and know that this is a big deal or a little deal, right? The average person can say have some pain or some issue and write it off as XYZ, but a doctor will know that this this is actually indicative of this over here. Right? If you were to look up right now on on the internet, I have pain in this part of my body. What does it mean? It'll give you a hundred different things that this pain could be right now. Would any person with their right in their right mind who takes their health seriously look at that and say, "Well, you know, it's a difference of opinion. So, this pain, you know, some some doctors say that this pain could be cancer and other doctors say that it's just gas and others say that it's a heart attack. I gas better. So, I'm going to go with that. It's just gas. What do you think of that? Huh? Yeah, because it's a difference of opinion, right? It's a difference of opinion, right? I have this headache. I looked it up and some say that it could be a tumor and some say that it could be a migraine and some say that I just need sleep. , I don't the first two, so I'm going to go with the last one. That one fits best into my lifestyle, right? Or if a person was diagnosed with an issue, a serious problem, would they just go do a quick Google search and then say, "Well, yes, I do have this disease here." But, , what I read is that, you know, you could just eat the following foods and stay away from this and it should resolve itself. So, inshallah, I'll just go with that. Right? Nobody te takes knowledge seriously would do that because one individual piece of knowledge has to fit with the bigger picture. That's number one. Number two, if you take something seriously, you understand that the truth could be lethal, the truth could be deadly, right? If this is in fact cancer and not just bloating from, you know, tacos that that you had a couple days before, then your life could be at risk. And it's not, well, I'm just making it and you know, Allah knows my intention and my intention is good. So that's why I went with the gas and not the cancer. So inshallah it'll work out because I have good intentions. That's not how it works. It either is or isn't something. And exactly the same thing with the Quran and Sunnah. When you meet Allah, it's either right or it's wrong. Right? Good intentions alone are not going to deliver you from that situation. The scholars, the and the companions, they gave a really good example of true knowledge. They said a master in knowledge and in the science of hadith. They were speaking in the scope of the science of hadith that you could one a great scholar alkari Muslim Abu Dani Abu Zi Abu Hatimi these other major scholars of hadith they can hear a narration and decide this narration is correct in authentic or inauthentic. And their students asked them, "How could you know? I mean, to me, it looks this. How can you know that so immediately?" And they said, "This is a goldsmith asking a goldsmith how he knows if it's real gold or fake gold." Casar, how does he know? How can how can a goldsmith as soon as he picks something up he says this is not real gold right this is goldplated this is not it looks real to me how can you how can you know that tell me how you know how can I explain that to you this is something that comes with years of experience years of of of research until you develop almost a feeling until you can almost see the colors All right. This is the point with respect to knowledge. Now, to to end inshallah and we will continue tomorrow inshallah with the remaining aspects of the pillars of fasting. to end. Yesterday we left on a note and that was we all know that urine or that feces for instance is filthy is negous right and we all know that if you pray with that on your person or on your body that this would invalidate your prayer. We all know that. Is there anyone who has ever doubted that feces is filthy? None amongst us that has ever doubted that. However, what's the evidence for that? Right? This is the difference between knowledge and you know general knowledge. This is the difference and there are evidences for that obviously. But the point is is that this is the difference between a person of knowledge and a person who has you know facts that they have accumulated over time. Right? And this is why it is so critical that we always always always refer to the scholars in everything. And when a scholar tells us something, we trust them and we and we stick to their directives and their direction. And this is what will keep the ummah united number one. And number two, this is what will keep the ummah on the path because we know that when will the ummah start to go off the path? The prophet tells us when will that be? When will that be? When the when the starts to stray from the path. No, the will start to stray from the path when the people of knowledge die. Isn't that what the prophet told us? He said, "Allah does not take back knowledge by extracting it from the hearts of men. Rather, he takes it back from a people by the death of the scholars. And the scholars will continue to die and be more and more scarce and sparse and more and more uncommon until there is no more scholars left in a community in a country in a state in an area. And then when there is no scholar left that there's a void, there's a vacuum. Now who fills it? The impostors. the R and J. He said the ignorant leaders, they talk people of knowledge. They dress people of knowledge, but they're not people of knowledge. And the problem with that is that even they are convinced that they are people of knowledge. They've deluded themselves even. And so then what happens? They will be asked and they will speak without knowledge and they will go astray and take everyone astray with them. Now, we went a little bit over time today, but it's okay. You know, whoever needs to leave can leave, but during Ramadan, it's it's good to have a few extra words here on these topics. We'll pick this up inshallah tomorrow. sallallahu alaihi wasallam. Make sure that you prepare yourself in your mind what your reaction is going to be today at Jum or today in general with respect to the fundraising for the academy for the everyone has to decide to do something right. If if everyone that comes to Jum were to pledge just $100, we would be in good shape at least. And every one of us can spare that. 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