Relatively obvious what this is about. Interestingly, the author was an Iraqi politician so I'm hoping that there will be some practical application proposals in the book. It's also important to understand that the author was a leader of Ikhwan in Iraq

As for this book, it's about the Messenger صلى الله عليه وسلم, as the title clearly indicates. It is similar to sh Abdullah Sirajuddin's (رحمه الله) book which i mentioned here

For the shafi'ites

For the Malikites

As for the hanbalites, the author has simply written:

مع الحنفية، غير أنهم يعتبرون اتحاد الجنس شرطا

This is an excellent video. It made me feel horrible lol but that's a good thing. Give it a watch even if you're not hanafi. The advice is general, yet priceless

https://www.youtube.com/live/TVDwLhNFHhI?si=GlRAvlYik1KS74Yb

Saving these here to watch them later:
1. How to study Kalam with sh Hamza Bekri

2. How to study hadith with Sh Issam Eido

[Bustaan al Arifeen by imam al Nawawi]

The Oppressed Muslim and the Cruel Reality of Power

Muslims haven't been doing too well for the last couple of centuries. We have heard enough diatribes on colonialism. We have also been given enough nostalgic eulogies of the Ottomans. We have been told enough about how barbaric the French, the British, the Italians, and the Dutch were. Poor us.

What this constant anticolonial rhetoric has caused, however, is a Muslim discourse that sees everything through the quasi-Marxist lens of class struggle. Our moral compass, through decades of victimisation, is always tilted to favour the weak and the oppressed; it is, after all, how so many of us have made peace with our pitiable state for all of these years. We were oppressed because the powers that be were stronger than us and we couldn't do anything to change that. Those colonizers were really mean. Poor us.

The practical translation of this is that the underdog is always right. For example, the side that is against the US (or any other major power) is always moral (in anything they do, against Uncle Sam or in any other context). The side that the powers that be even nominally support is evil. There is no possibility to benefit from or exploit convergent interests, or to develop independence in the shadow of temporary dependence. More importantly, the moment any Muslim entity is succesful (to any degree) in serious consolidation and amplification of power is seen as suspicious. Why wouldn't they be seen that way? They are trying to shed the one thing that keeps them pitiable: their victimhood.

This deep-rooted sickness is part of the never-ending loop that makes most Muslims and Arabs see no ray of hope in the world. The only people they respect are "principled" failed states who can effect no change beyond their own borders (and they don't look too promising within their borders either), or failed martyrs whose pietistic naïveté led to their early termination. Ultimately, though nobody will say this aloud, the metric for authenticity is one: remaining a victim.

Anyone using the various corridors of power to help their people is automatically an agent because they, instead of massaging the collective ego, decided to play the game to make a difference and (gradually) remove the shackles of vassalage.

The sad thing about all of this is that these people will always remain deprived of the signs of hope that Allah ta'ala places in the world. They cannot rejoice at any success that Muslims are given because the success itself is a bearer of bad news: that the story we told ourselves all along was just a coping mechanism and that change is really possible. Besides this being a very sad way to live, it is also indicative of a lack of practical hope in Allah ta'ala's mercy and ambivalence about his grace.

May Allah subhanah give the Ummah of Muhammad (صلى الله تعالى عليه وسلّم) more success and may he never deprive of us being happy at his favours.

Al Asas is something I'll be studying this year insha Allah. Whereas the I'timad of imam Abu'l Barakaat al Nasafi is his commentary on his own matn, al-Umdah fee aqeedah ahl al Sunnah, which I have studied, but need to review and flesh out a bit before we start sharh al Aqa'id in this upcoming year. Make du'a please

Important. I remember watching a debate years ago where one of the interlocutors, in an attempt to discredit 'Aql as an evidence, said something to the effect of "Whose Aql!? Al Razi's Aql? Al Baqillani's Aql? Whose aql!?"

Strange. I remember thinking to myself that this person perhaps doesn't know what 'aql is...

[al I'timad by imam al Nasafi]

When I read the comments of many who affiliate themselves with contemporary Salafism concerning the Ashʿarism of so many leading imams among the Qurʾanic exegetes, jurists, and hadith scholars—such as al-Nawawī, al-Qurṭubī, al-Shāṭibī, and Ibn Ḥajar, and even those before them, such as al-Khaṭṭābī, al-Bayhaqī, and others—I find them saying that these scholars were influenced by Ashʿarism because they studied under some Ashʿarī teachers, and that they simply followed the scholarly environment in which they lived.

What this amounts to is the claim that, in their Ashʿarism, these imams were mere imitators (muqallids), rather than critical and independent scholars—even though most of them explicitly identified with it, and even though they adopted Ashʿarī positions on the major subjects of creed, such as the Divine Names and Attributes, faith, and divine decree.

This would mean that these imams were duped by Ashʿarism and lacked both rigorous critical scholarship and solid expertise in matters of creed, causing them to fall into such grave error—according to this view.

When I see this, I realize the extent to which the self-proclaimed specialists in creed among them have become inflated with themselves. They imagine themselves to possess greater depth, expertise, and critical precision than those imams who supposedly “floundered”!

I therefore do not find it surprising that they imagine themselves to possess such expertise that no one outside their alleged specialization is permitted to speak—so long as that person disagrees with their conclusions!

They have placed themselves above the great imams of Islam. They have imagined themselves to be more rigorous and precise than those imams. They have made themselves and their own views the judges over the imams and their beliefs, on the pretext that they themselves adhere more closely to the evidence in matters in which, supposedly, no one could err except someone confused and lacking scholarly precision!

The truth is that what they need more than anything is the purification of their own souls, and to occupy themselves with that for a considerable time, rather than accumulating knowledge and specializations that have puffed them up until they have practically burst with arrogance and condescension toward the imams of Islam—let alone toward their contemporary opponents.

They fail to realize that they, their specializations, their teachers, and their teachers’ teachers, when placed before the great imams of Islam whom they have accused of confusion, imitation, and lack of scholarly precision, are no more than a tiny patch of herbage at the foot of towering date palms! Indeed, they are less than that!

If only they were even like such herbage—for although herbage is slight and short in stature, it still benefits people!

But in their haughtiness and blatant conceit, they are more like colocynth:

“Like an evil tree, uprooted from the surface of the earth, having no stability.” [Qurʾān 14:26]

—Written by Sheikh Dr. al-Sharīf Ḥātim ibn ʿĀrif al-ʿAwnī

Will translate later iA

[Al Durar al Mubaha by Imam Al Nahlawi]

On the Prohibition of speaking first in the presence of an 'Aalim

"And from [the prohibitions] is when an ignorant person speaks first, regarding ilm or otherwise, in the presence of an aalim. Likewise if it's a student in the presence of a teacher or someone more knowledgeable/virtuous than them. This is poor adab.

Part of respecting a teacher is that you don't walk in front of him, you don't sit in his seat even if he is absent, you don't speak before him, you don't speak a lot around him and you don't ask him about something when he is angry/tired.

The ulema have explained the dislikedness of someone saying to another who is his senior in 'ilm, 'It's time for salah,' or similar, due to it being disrespectful."

[Al Durar al Mubaha by Imam al Nahlawi]

SCRIPTURAL INTEGRITY IN THE SUNNĪ
ḤADĪTH TRADITION
A study of Ḥadīth transmission and criticism in the first three centuries

Adapted from Min al-Nabī ilā al-Bukhārī by: Dr Aḥmad Ṣnūbar