Roots OfKnowledge

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17 hours ago | [YT] | 3

Roots OfKnowledge

Why Translations Are Incomplete and not Enough

Translations of the Quran only give you a fraction of a verse; they can never encompass it fully. I have always repeated this to my students, and I will continue to do so. People who believe it is enough to just read a translation are effectively veiled from the true depth of the Quran. They will, of course, grasp the core message of the truthfulness of Islam and its purpose, but they will fail to see how the verses hold multiple, synchronised meanings, like the cogs in a watch, all working together to produce a greater, multi-dimensional meaning. I know it is not easy to understand this unless you have actually tasted it.

Just a quick disclaimer: I don't intend to open the door to baseless, "out-there" esoteric interpretations. Every single one of these dimensions is strictly based in classical academic discourse and disciplines.

To see what this multi-dimensional reality looks like in practice, look at how Allah says:

إِنَّمَا ذَٰلِكُمُ ٱلشَّيۡطَٰنُ يُخَوِّفُ أَوْلِيَآءَهُۥ [آل عمران: ١٧٥]

“That is only Shaytan who terrifies his allies...”

In their tafsirs, al-Alusi and Ibn Ashoor highlight six distinct angles of discussion packed into just these few words:

1. Who is "that" (dhalikum) referring to? Is it the physical person spreading rumours or the statement itself?
2. Why call him Shaytan instead of Iblees? Is it a proper noun, or a description of his devilish behavior?
3. Whose allies (awliya'ahu) are they? Are they Shaytan's actual allies, or someone else's?
4. Is there an omitted word? Should we read an implied phrase like "the statement of" Shaytan?
5. Is it literal or figurative? Is Shaytan physically doing this, or is it attributed to him because he inspired it?
6. Who is the ultimate audience being addressed? The believers who went to battle, or the ones who stayed behind?

When you unpack these questions, the verse suddenly opens up into a spectrum of valid, concurrent meanings.

For instance, Shaytan might be the descriptive title of Iblees, as he is the ultimate source of this trait. Or it could be describing the human scaremonger who was actively deterring the believers, branding him a shaytan because of his actions.

Similarly, the "allies" could mean Shaytan's own forces, the enemy army, whom he magnifies in the believers' hearts to terrify them. On the other hand, the Muslims who hesitated and stayed behind from battle could be the ones being labeled "his allies" as a severe rebuke, because by giving in to fear, they aligned with his agenda.

It's also possible that there is a hidden, implied word here: "That is only [the statement of] Shaytan..." because the pronoun dhalikum naturally points back to the discouraging rumours uttered, which are referred to in the previous verses. If we take it to mean the literal words of the human scaremonger, it is still figuratively attributed to Iblees, since he is the one who ultimately engineered the whisperings behind the scenes.

Depending on how you map the grammar of these five words, you get entirely different dimensions of the same verse:

For the first part

إِنَّمَا ذَٰلِكُمُ ٱلشَّيۡطَٰنُ

"That is only Shaytan (Iblees)..."
"That person is acting just like a shaytan..."
"That is only the propaganda of Shaytan..."
And for the second part

يُخَوِّفُ أَوْلِيَآءَهُۥ

"...who frightens his own allies [those who follow him]."
"...who frightens you through his allies [the enemy army]."
"...who puts the fear of his allies into your hearts."
So, what is the ultimate takeaway from these five words?

Historically, scaremongers were moving through the ranks, trying to strike terror into the hearts of the Muslim soldiers before they went to battle. By leaving the wording fluid, Allah addresses every layer of the psychological warfare happening on the ground:

1.To the steadfast believers
" Don’t be deterred by the rumors. That is just Shaytan behind the scenes, trying to project fear onto you through his allies, the enemy."

2. To the hypocrites and doubters
"The person going around spreading this panic is just a puppet of Shaytan, and he is only exposing the fear striking his own heart first."

3. As a timeless principle:
"Shaytan paralyzes his own followers with fear to prevent them from ever stepping forward or standing up for the truth."

Imagine five Arabic words with six angles. Multiple, perfectly valid renderings, all placed comfortably inside a single verse, whereas most English translations write it into a single, static sentence.

This is exactly what gets lost when a translation is mistaken for the Quran itself, rather than treated for what it actually is, a small pool that leads to an ocean.

23 hours ago | [YT] | 19

Roots OfKnowledge

'Other' discussions and oddities in the books of tafsir

For anyone who is into reading, you know that writers have a tendency to go on a tangent. But you see this especially in the books of tafsir, where scholars will discuss the oddest topics under a particular, totally different chapter.

This is something I find fascinating; it gives me a real insight into the mind of the writer and where his thoughts take him. One of the most common places this happens is in tafsir, where a scholar will digress from one verse and just start discussing a seemingly random topic of politics, maybe an anecdote, or even a topic related to a completely different discipline. The mind of the writer is just filled with such vast knowledge and reading that he naturally makes connections between subjects, topics, and events seamlessly.

Take Imam Qurtubi, for example. Under the verse where the followers of Musa were told to say 'Hittah', which was a specific utterance to gain forgiveness, they began to alter the pronunciation out of mockery. Right there, Qurtubi writes that the scholars have differed on whether it is permissible for someone to quote a narration from the Prophet (peace be upon him) in their own words. After summarising his research, he simply ends it by saying Allah knows best and returns straight back to the verse. This form of dipping into multiple disciplines and giving the reader a taste of another topic is definitely something that keeps me glued to the book.

Tahir ibn Ashur highlights this as very problematic, especially when it takes the primary focus away from the verses towards something else. When I read his critique, I remembered my days in madrassa when sometimes a teacher would go off on a tangent regarding a contemporary issue under the principle:

الشيء بالشيء يذكر

Or as we say: "While we are on the subject..."

An expert in Nahw can sometimes make you forget you're even reading the Quran, and a Muhaddith can make you think that the Quran can't be understood without discussing all the ins and outs of chains and narrators. Sticking to the topic is probably one of the hardest things for a mufassir to do, especially when there is so much to talk about, even if it's not closely connected to the verses. Sadly, if unchecked, a tafsir lesson which is supposed to bring people closer to Allah can end up as a template for bringing people closer to other objectives and ideas.

However, this can sometimes become a tool for the writer to vent personal views, whether or not it enhances the verse's meaning, as there are no clear boundaries on what constitutes 'Tafsir'. Starting a tafsir and trying to explain the significance of the dot under the letter 'Ba' and saying that it is the essence of the entire Quran is an oddity.

This is why I feel students find it so hard to read a tafsir cover to cover; the 'other discussions' just become overwhelming. Identifying what the actual tafsir of the verse is from all the extra information becomes a blur. But once the main understanding of the verse is clearly explained, reading al-Razi, Abu Bakr bin al-Arabi, or even Ruh al-Ma'ani becomes extremely enjoyable, and those extra discussions really add to one's knowledge.

2 days ago | [YT] | 18

Roots OfKnowledge

A belief system founded on a square circle

One of the things I've noticed while reading Shaykh Mustafa Sabri's Mawqif al-Aql is how the status of the Aql, the rational faculty, can be manipulated and still seem flawless to the average person, just enough to rationalise a baseless agenda.

It's like having the answer already in your head, along with a few digits, and then inventing the calculation backwards so the answer looks like it was arrived at honestly.

Muslims understood from the early years that the only way to argue a point properly was to master the art of articulation and thinking. Just as everything physical in this world follows predictable patterns and rules, so too do the rules of thinking and rationality. They aren't up for grabs.

Imagination is different. Making things up in your mind is endless, it doesn't have to tie itself to any logic. You can invent a square circle in your head and build a whole movie around it. You can get people to join you, laugh about it, cry about it, give you their feedback, and all of it will be based on rules you invented yourself.

Now imagine growing up inside that environment. You're told, day in and day out, that this is simply how the world works. Then one day you notice things don't add up. You bring it up to the people around you, and instead of answering the inconsistency, they mock you, or drag you down some other thought-road that never actually resolves what you pointed out, it just buries it under more disconnected thoughts.

This is exactly what the Prophets of Allah, peace be upon them, had to face. They used reason to show people that the very pattern of thought governing their worship was severely flawed, full of square circles, dressed up to look sound. Like a spider's web, it looks perfect and strong from the inside, but it only takes one person standing outside it to swipe it with their hand and watch how easily it collapses.

That's why there's a need for men and women who train themselves not just to think rationally, but to spot flawed reasoning in other people and other belief systems, especially the philosophers, who have a habit of handing people their own version of "thought," built on broken systems, and calling it reason.

Shaykh Mustafa Sabri makes the point that Western philosophers built their frameworks either on the Christian doctrine of the Son of God, or on pure materialism, and used either one to produce invented calculations about reality. He traces the cracks this leaves in their thinking down to six main faults:

1. Elevating empiricism over pure reason - restricting yourself to what the limited senses can catch, and calling that the whole of knowledge.
2. The "disease of doubt" - Sabri's term for the systematic doubt Descartes pushed as a starting method.
3. Isolating causality to the material world – claiming causality governs matter but has no bearing on the metaphysical.
4. Measuring the Creator by the created – reducing God to the standards and limits of the created world.
5. Violating logical necessity – deciding square circles are fine to build belief around, the same move Descartes makes when he claims God can do the logically impossible.
6. Leaning on blind nature and chance to explain what can't otherwise be explained – the idea that underpins a lot of atheist reasoning.

Every one of these, in the end, is the same trick as the math analogy I opened with: decide on the answer first, then reverse-engineer a calculation sophisticated enough to make it look earned.

5 days ago | [YT] | 18

Roots OfKnowledge

The Problem With Secondhand Information

You either know something yourself, or you know what someone told you about it. The moment you're putting your trust in the second kind, you inherit the responsibility of verifying whether what you've been told is accurate and whether it's the whole truth.

When it's about a person, this problem becomes especially delicate, as it claims that so-and-so said or did this. The problem is that hearing about someone secondhand can quietly construct a distorted image of them in your mind, either inflating them into something more than they really are or, the opposite, tarnishing their character and reputation. The latter is what we call backbiting and slander.

I remember the first time I heard about a particular scholar, back when I was studying. The image formed in my mind was based on what others said and became exaggerated to the point of making him seem almost superhuman in certain ways. That image bubble burst the moment I actually met him a few times and realised he was human, like everyone else, and that most of what I heard was not accurate.

The same distortion happens with ideas and texts, and it's arguably more consequential, because it can shape what people believe about an entire school of thought or what a scholar actually says. I remember hearing statements like Abu Hanifa only knew 17 Hadith, that Imam Malik prayed with his hands to the side due to impaired arms, that Imam Ahmed didn't have a Fiqh School because he was weak in Fiqh, or that all four schools of Fiqh unanimously agree that cutting the beard short is sinful. It took me a while to try to uneducate myself from those claims after speaking to scholars from various backgrounds and reading the original material.

Those who haven't studied Arabic, or read the original books themselves, are permanently limited to whatever secondhand sources they can access. I've heard graduates quote Fath al-Bari without having read it. I've heard people critique Ibn Taymiyyah without having read his works in the original Arabic. I've heard people characterise the Hanafi school without having opened a single one of its original sources.

This puts them at a real disadvantage, and worse, if they don't recognise the limitation, they have no way of knowing how far their understanding has drifted from the reality of the matter.

Secondhand sources, by their nature, are prone to four recurring failures:
1. Misunderstanding: the summariser simply got it wrong.
2. Decontextualisation: a point is lifted out of the argument or circumstance that gave it its true meaning.
3. Extreme exaggeration: a modest position hardens into a caricature by the time it's repeated.
4. Bias of the source: the person relaying the information has their agenda, consciously or not, shaping what they chose to include.

Errors are always possible even when reading a text directly in its original language, but secondhand transmission compounds the problem. Every additional link in the chain is another opportunity for human error to creep in, and those errors accumulate rather than cancel out.

This brings me to the challenge of our day, social media. It can be said that it has created near-perfect conditions for distorted information on steroids. A claim about a person or a text can now travel through hundreds of retellings within hours, each one slightly reshaped, before anyone involved has had the chance to check the original source. Speed, distance from the source, and the absence of any real accountability all work together to make secondhand distortion worse than it has ever been.

Alhamdulilah, Islam has not left us without guidance, and its teaching addresses this exact problem directly. Five pieces of guidance stand out:

1. Leave what makes you doubtful, and take what is certain. Avoid drawing conclusions about people or texts based on unreliable or unverified information.

2. Verify information before spreading it to others. This is the direct antidote to everything above: the responsibility doesn't end at hearing something; it begins there.

3. Leave what doesn't concern you. Much of this distortion spreads simply because people involve themselves in matters that were never theirs to comment on.

4. Give your brothers and sisters the benefit of the doubt. Where the evidence is ambiguous. When the evidence is unclear, don't let rumours dictate your character. by rumour.

5. Speak to people according to what they can understand. Even accurate information, delivered without regard for the listener's capacity to receive it, can be distorted the moment it leaves your mouth.

Whether it's a scholar's character or a school of law's actual position, the pattern is the same: distance from the original source is where distortion enters. The only real safeguard is to go back to the source yourself wherever you can and, where you can't, to hold what you've been told with the caution it deserves.

6 days ago | [YT] | 29

Roots OfKnowledge

The Grand Puzzle of Commentaries

Sometimes it can seem as though authors of classical Islamic literature were writing as if their work was just one piece in a grand puzzle. But that isn't really the case.

If you went back in time, you'd find that a scholar simply saw a need for a particular topic to be discussed or felt a text needed a commentary. At the time, that work represented the most up-to-date writing in that field. Then another scholar came along and, whether he knew about the previous work or not, wrote another commentary or a super-commentary. Fast-forward a few centuries, and you find a whole library of works written around just one classical text.

Students often become overwhelmed by this huge list of books, feeling like they have to read every single one as if each is indispensable.

From experience, most books in a subject usually fall into 3 categories:
1. An original textbook (matn)
2. A commentary or set of footnotes (sharh) aimed at making sense of a condensed text
3. A book that surveys a series of works and adds context

When an original text is studied thoroughly, it usually reduces the need for a student to rely heavily on commentaries or footnotes. When I say "thoroughly," I mean at the level of assessment level 3 in modern education terms. That means the student isn't just grasping the facts of the text, but can apply the concepts and analyze the various viewpoints and theories of different scholars. Once you hit that level, the main benefit of reading commentaries is simply learning what other scholars thought about the text.
I remember one of my teachers advising us to study and re-read the original text multiple times and even considering this to be better than spending time reading commentaries.

A good rule of thumb for mastering a text is that a student can easily, and in their own words, summarise it, provide its context, and apply its principles to modern times.

On the other hand, slowly, explaining a subject text-by-text, which is the common method in madrasas, helps students build deep familiarity and understand the subject more systematically. Commentaries in that setting help students further their journey. But because of how and when they were written, commentaries aren't written in a neat, progressive order, though some are naturally much easier for students to read than others.

Because of this jumbled library of works, a student who wants to become proficient in, let's say Fiqh, has to spend years at the feet of scholars so that these seemingly disconnected arguments slowly start to make sense and show a hidden pattern.

If someone today wanted to write a series of commentaries on Hanafi Fiqh, I'd suggest keeping the following points in mind:

Level 1
> Go through a classical authoritative primer such as Mukhtasar al-Quduri.
> Recognize that most students are non-Arabs and require elaboration of key words right at the start.
> Explain the unwritten concepts behind each chapter that exist behind the scenes, which the author expects students to already be familiar with.
> Give a brief reasoning or rationale behind each ruling.

Level 2
> Bring detailed arguments for and against the views mentioned.
> List the views of later jurists and explain why they held those views.
> Identify who, when, and why a certain view was adopted as the official position.
> Bring modern-day case studies, helping the student navigate real-world application.

Level 3
> Study and evaluate contemporary positions of fatwa from a variety of Hanafi jurists on modern issues.
> Look at surveys and the impact of ideas, technology, and medicine on the modern world, showing how these factors impact and revisit the viewpoints of jurists.

1 week ago | [YT] | 25

Roots OfKnowledge

The Danger of Refuting Others

Refutation isn't just something we see every time we scroll through our feeds. Nor is it a feature unique to Islam. It's been a hallmark of human society from day one. Though it is clear that whenever the Prophets confronted the crimes of their people, debate was the inevitable consequence. The Prophets knew, without a shred of doubt, that the message they carried from the Creator was absolute truth [Haq].

The problem arises when others engage in refutations by laying down their own arbitrary boundaries of ‘Haq’. The Khawarij were the first faction to publicly refute other Muslims simply for not conforming to their narrow understanding of Haq, a path that inevitably led to mainstream believers being labeled as deviants or disbelievers. Even the great Imams were not immune; Abu Hanifa, for instance, was fiercely targeted by contemporaries who claimed he had transgressed the limits of ‘Haq’, according to their own definitions, of course.

Whether facing intense opposition for his views on the role of ‘actions’ in the definition of Iman, the ritual of piercing a sacrificial camel's hump for Hajj, or a woman's right to marry without a ‘wali’, his critics were unyielding. Yet, history shows that views change, or at least adjust, when people actually engage in rigorous research and sit down to discuss objections with their opponents.

The true litmus test of the boundaries of 'Haq' is how an argument stands the test of time. After a few decades, scholars began to realise that Imam Abu Hanifa’s views were never intended to undermine Islam; rather, it was his rigorous methodology and reasoning that led him to those conclusions.

I remember once meeting someone who was taught that Imam Abu Hanifa just invented his own views without any real consistency. When I asked them for an example, they said, "How can he say that wudu breaks when a person laughs in salah, but absolutely nothing happens to their wudu if that same person was to slander someone in salah?"

I told them that this wasn't an inconsistency at all. Imam Abu Hanifa has a core principle: when a ruling comes in a Hadith that our minds cannot reach through human reasoning or logic, we accept it exactly as it is and act upon it as much as we can. The scholars of Kufa identified that the Hadith regarding wudu breaking due to laughter in prayer was widely acknowledged and transmitted, unlike the idea of wudu breaking due to slander. What they saw as a contradiction was actually just strict adherence to a precise principle.

The true boundaries of 'Haq' must be clearly identified and unanimous among reputable authorities. Views that differ from 'madhab' to 'madhab' and expert to expert are, in most cases, well within these legitimate limits.

This does not mean scholars should remain silent or stop correcting errors. Rather, it means that a refutation concerning a matter within the legitimate scope of 'Ijtihad' cannot be used to label someone a deviant or place them outside the fold of Islam.

Too often, those who feel triggered by a point of view that differs from what they are accustomed to, or what they have superficially read, feel compelled to launch public debates. We see this clearly with young people newly practising Islam; they tend to view the tradition in stark black and white, finding it difficult to comprehend why others might pray or navigate details differently. If a study were conducted on online debaters, whether independent influencers or comment-section critics, I wouldn't be surprised if the vast majority fell into that exact demographic.

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 20

Roots OfKnowledge

For those following my Learn How to Read Quran Series

For those would be interested in coming on Live to practise Quran recitation. How many lessons have you done?

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 8

Roots OfKnowledge

What is a commentary on hadith?

Most students probably don't ever think to ask this, but if you want to seriously study or teach hadith, it’s a really important question.
We need the Prophet’s ﷺ words to actually make sense of the Quran. In reality, without hadith, how would we even know how to pray properly, calculate zakat, or practise the basics of our religion?

When we talk about a hadith, we’re usually talking about Arabic words connected to the blessed Prophet Muhammad ﷺ something he said, did, or silently approved of.

Once the Prophet ﷺ passed away, the religion was already fully complete. The Sahabah, both men and women, completely lived and breathed these core teachings. If anyone ran into a gap in their knowledge, they’d simply go and ask whoever had some insight. For anything totally new, they relied on the views of experienced people or their own sound judgment as a last resort to figure out the solution. As the community was freshly exposed to the era of revelation, their judgement would always be unmatched compared to subsequent generations.

That's really how the whole system of transmission took off. At the same time, a companion would remember a statement and pass it to others, including those who came after known as Tabi'un, to memorise, and they’d hand it down to their own students. It became a generational relay race, an unbroken chain of people carrying these blessed words through history. Some of them would try to convey the exact meaning they heard whilst others would suffice with it in their own words. It became a passion for many people to learn and teach, holding dedicated gatherings for it.

I don't want to focus here on the transmission side of things, but instead on the commentary of hadith and how it is traditionally explained. I would summarise the core areas around which the discussions revolve are the following:
1. Language
2. Narrators
3. Message itself
4. Previous writings

Since hadith are in Arabic and the phrasing is often really direct and conversational, you have to understand the vocabulary, idioms, and context so you don't completely distort the meaning.
Open up any major commentary, and you'll see the author spending pages just breaking down the language. They aren't just looking things up in a standard dictionary; they’re drawing on a deep, internalised mastery of the classical Arabic linguistic tradition, sometimes bringing in heavy debates from grammar and balagha (rhetoric) to unpack a tiny, nuanced expression.

They also dissect the narrators. They collect all the background data needed to grade a chain and see if the old masters of the science had any serious criticisms against a specific narrator.

From there, they focus on the actual message. They'll pull in other narrations, statements from the Sahabah, or explanations from early scholars to contextualize everything.

Finally, they look at what previous commentators said and critique their views. Commentators are human, and digging out the exact meaning requires scholarly ijtihad, so no single person has a monopoly on being right.

But when it comes to Fiqh, the madhhabs will naturally prefer interpretations that fit their own legal principles.That is what a normal commentary looks like. Some authors pay close attention to the language, while others concentrate on the legal rules. Obviously, the depth of the book depends entirely on how skilled the author is.

So how does a teacher actually teach a book of hadith?
It usually depends on their own training and experience. If an average student just opens a raw commentary by themselves, it’s incredibly confusing. That's really why I wanted to share this short breakdown based on what I've seen.

To be honest, opening a commentary, whether it's one or twenty volumes, won't help you until you've studied the original text with a qualified teacher. A teacher's explanation speeds up the entire process because it is based on their own teacher's notes rather than being made up on the spot. If you trace those notes backward, you'll find an unbroken chain of teachers passing on insights while adding their own research along the way.

A serious teacher never just stops at what they learnt in class. They actively cross-reference their notes with the classical commentaries written by the absolute authorities in the field and discussions from other sciences. This is how they catch any subtle mistakes they might have made without realising it.
No single scholar has a monopoly on explaining a hadith, but when an interpretation matches the standards of the masters of this field, it carries real weight.

For students, the goal isn't to get lost trying to read these massive commentaries alone but to use them to understand just how much depth our teachers are bringing into the classroom. Whilst studying hadith you can read a commentary that you're comfortable with to supplement your lessons.

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 32

Roots OfKnowledge

Clipping videos of any Muslim:
1. Without context
2. With misleading titles/commentary
3. Assumed intentions of the speaker

Is not from the character of a believer and falls under the following:
1. Lying
2. Slander
3. or/and Backbiting

The severity of the sin continues with everyone who views it

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 27