Islam & Modernism

(بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ - bismillahir-rahmanir-rahim)

Islam & Modernism

Lecture by Dr. Abu Aminah Bilal Philips

Chennai, India - Peace Vision of Islam Conference

Saturday, 19th January 2008

Speaker Introduction

Now, our speaker tonight, Dr. Bilal Phillips, is also very internet savvy, and so I invite you to visit his websites, www.islamiconlineuniversity.com, where you can enroll for courses on Islam, listen to audios, watch certain class videos, and also download PDFs. That's at www.islamiconlineuniversity.com.

www.islamicstudiesacademy.com These are two websites of our speaker, Dr. Bilal Phillips.

We'll be moving over to the second podium. This is the podium of Dr. Bilal. At now, it is my pleasure to introduce and bring to the podium, our final speaker for this evening, Saturday, the 19th of January, 2008, the Chennai, India Peace Vision of Islam Conference, Dr. Abu Amina Bilal Phillips.

Dr. Abu Amina Bilal Phillips was born in Jamaica, West Indies, and grew up in Canada, where he accepted Islam in 1972. He completed a BA from the College of Islamic Disciplines, Rasooluddin, at the Islamic University in Medina, Saudi Arabia, in 1979, and a Master's in Islamic Theology in 1985 at the University of Morav College of Education. In 1994, he completed a PhD in Islamic Theology in the Department of Islamic Studies at the University of Wales in the United Kingdom.

From 1994 to 2001, Dr. Bilal had founded and directed the Islamic Information Centre in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and the Foreign Literature Department of Darul Fattah Islamic Press in Sharjah. In the year 2001, he went on to establish the Islamic Online University, the first accredited Islamic University on the Internet. He was a professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the American University in Dubai, and Ajman Universities.

He was the head of the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Preston University in Ajman, United Arab Emirates. A lecturer and head of the Sharia Advisory Committee at the Qatar Death Centre in Doha, Qatar, and he is currently the dean of the Islamic Studies Academy in Doha, Qatar. You can seek more information on this at www.islamicstudiesacademy.com Islam spelled with a double A. For more information about him and his activities, you may visit his personal website at www.bilalphillips.com B-I-L-A-L-P-H-I-L-I-P-S Ladies and gentlemen, speaking on the topic, Islam and Modernism, welcome to the podium, Sheikh Dr. Abu Aminah Bilal Phillips.

Opening Greetings

(السَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ اللَّهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ - Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh)

(الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ وَالْعَاقِبَةُ لِلْمُتَّقِينَ وَلَا عُدْوَانَ إِلَّا عَلَى الظَّالِمِينَ وَأَشْهَدُ أَنْ لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا اللَّهُ وَحْدَهُ لَا شَرِيكَ لَهُ وَأَشْهَدُ أَنَّ مُحَمَّدًا عَبْدُهُ وَرَسُولُهُ - Alhamdu lillah, rabbil 'alameen, wal 'aaqibatu lil muttaqeen, wa la 'udwaana illa 'alaz zalimeen. Wa ash-hadu an laa ilaaha ill-Allahu wahdahu la shareeka lah, wa ash-hadu anna Muhammadan 'abduhu wa rasooluh)

Indeed, our praise is due to Allah, and success will ultimately be given to those who are righteous. And enmity should be towards those who are oppressors in this world. And I bear witness that there is no God worthy of worship but Allah, and that Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) is the last messenger of Allah.

What is Modernism?

Modernism is a topic and a term which comes from another civilization. It is something which has no place in Islamic teachings. It is a foreign term.

A term which is being promoted in order to change Islam as we know it today. Or as it has been known for the last 1,400 years. Efforts to modernize Islam began some time ago.

But before looking at those efforts, it is important for us to understand the roots of modernism in its original home. In Europe and America, when scientists found contradictions between the writings of the Bible, the Torah, and what they had learned and developed from their own empirical research, a movement, a rebellion against what could be called orthodox Christianity and Judaism began. A science known as higher criticism, where biblical texts were compared ancient texts with more recent texts to determine where changes had taken place, and ultimately leading the scholars to conclude that these works were the works of men.

Though in previous times, the Bible was considered to be the word of God, and the Torah, the word of God to Moses. However, from the period of the Renaissance up to the 20th century, a progressive change took place, which led even scholars of the Bible and the Torah to conclude that these were the works of human beings. Therefore, as works of human beings, they had to be updated.

Human efforts are not complete, cannot be complete, because times change, and therefore religion written up by human beings also needed to change along with the times. This way of thinking led to the modernist movement among Christians and Jews. It took on a variety of different names, among them liberal interpretations and others, and what we found was that changes took place within the church and within Jewish tradition, basically trying to modernize Christianity and Judaism so that it would become acceptable to a new generation that was raised on science and inquiry and challenging and questioning every known truth.

As a result, it was concluded that anything which went against scientific knowledge had to be reinterpreted. The texts were reinterpreted from a devotional perspective, from a moral and ethical perspective, and the laws were

left behind. So, we had Jews who didn't abide by the dietary laws, how animals were to be slaughtered, which animals could be eaten, etc.

Modern Judaism rejected these laws as being antiquated, and modern Christianity followed with regards to the laws or principles that the church followed into the 21st century, where the society changed in its attitudes towards things like pornography, homosexuality, etc. So, the church changed its views also. So, now we have, in Protestantism, homosexual priests.

Homosexual priests, something unthinkable in the 60s and before. But now, in spite of the texts about Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible, we now have homosexual priests. This attitude, people have tried also to put on Islam.

The Colonial Era and Three Muslim Trends

And the movement to do it began from the colonial era, when the colonial powers conquered the Muslim world and imposed their way of life on the Muslim world. We found Muslims in a state of retreat, stagnation from an educational point of view, falling more and more into a state of backwardness. As the colonial powers would promote others in those countries, Muslim countries, who were non-Muslims, etc., promote them into positions of authority.

And the consequence of that led to three distinct trends amongst Muslims. Muslims who might be called scholars and others. On one hand, we had a group who were traditionalists.

The Traditionalists

Traditionalists in the sense that they felt we should just continue as we were. Our tradition was madrasas. We leave the reading and understanding of Quran to the ulama.

And the average Muslim didn't know Arabic, wasn't encouraged to learn Arabic in the non-Arabic countries. And the traditionalists supported that way.

The Reformists

There was another group that arose at this time, who looking at the situation realized that Muslims had strayed from the path.

And this is what led to their state of backwardness and decline. Not Islam. It wasn't Islam.

Islam was intact. But Muslims had strayed away from Islam. So what needed to be developed, what needed to be promoted, was a return to the original teachings of Islam as found in the Quran and the Sunnah.

The Modernists

The third group which appeared was that of the modernists. Those who felt that Islam was outdated. And it was necessary actually to change Islamic teachings themselves.

And it is this group that the colonial powers supported strongly. So we find appearing as representatives of this group in the three major centers of Islam. Turkey, Egypt and India.

Three Leaders of the Modernist Movement

Turkey - Kemal Ataturk

Turkey were the seat of the caliphate, the Islamic caliphate was. It was necessary to undermine that and to bring it down. And the person chosen for that job was Kemal Ataturk.

Kemal Ataturk whose ideas were secular. He attempted to change the face of Islam in Turkey and from there project a new face over the west of the Muslim world. He called for the Adhan to be given in Turkish.

He brought pews into the masjids, chairs that people should sit on like the chairs in the churches. He forbade Muslims from wearing turbans. They had to wear bowler hats like the people in Europe wore at that time.

And he also forbade women from wearing hijab, from covering their heads, the headscarf was prohibited.

Egypt - Muhammad Abduh

In Egypt, the leader of that movement was Muhammad Abduh. Who was chosen and given the position of Sheikh al-Azhar, the head of Azhar.

Egypt was chosen because Azhar University was considered the seat of Islamic learning in the Muslim world. This is where Muslim scholarship was traditionally and had been traditionally developed. So that became a focus.

Muhammad Abduh, his position, as he said, whenever he felt distress, or he felt a need for renewal of his spirit, when he felt down etc. there in Egypt, he would travel to Europe. And revive his spirit.

So he is telling us with that expression what his point of view was. Basically, that what the West had, the Muslim world needed. That the Western world was completely compatible with Islamic teachings etc.

Muslims needed to be like Westerners. And he attempted, because of the influence of science, he was very much overwhelmed by Western science. He attempted to explain away all of the miracles in the Quran through other means.

For example, in the chapter known as Surah al-Feel, where Allah describes the destruction of the armies of Abraham. When he came with an elephant to destroy the Kaaba in Mecca, that Allah sent birds with clay pebbles in their beaks and they dropped it on these people and it killed them and killed the elephant. This was a miracle.

Muhammad Abduh, in an attempt to make it acceptable to a Western mind, scientific mind said, well actually the birds were not really birds. The word for bird, tayr, really means a flying being. It could be an insect or a bird or even a flying fox.

They have flying foxes as a kind of animal. It's all called tayr. So he said, really tayr referred to mosquitoes.

That's what was happening. Mosquitoes were carrying microbes. The clay pebbles were not really clay pebbles, they were microbes.

And when they beat the army of Abraham and his elephant, they were infected by disease and they died. That was his explanation.

India - Sir Syed Ahmed Khan

In India, we had the representative of modernism, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan.

The founder of Aligarh University. Who basically promoted the idea that success lied in following the British, the British way. He promoted rationalism and he also denied the miracles in the Quran.

He spoke against polygamy, the Islamic divorce laws, against riba, saying it was ok, interest, modern interest, against the hudood, the fixed Islamic laws for certain crimes. And of course in Aligarh University, what was taught there of Islam was taught only in English. To take the students away from the Arabic foundations.

To create a new generation who would be divorced from the roots of Islamic knowledge. His student, Amir Ali, was an extreme modernist. Who wrote a book called The Spirit of Islam.

One of the first books that I read when I accepted Islam. He mentioned in there that Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) wrote the Quran. And he promoted the idea that it is about the spirit of Islam and not the letter of the law.

We should focus only on the devotional aspects of Islam. This is where the truth of Islam lies. Not in the laws because times change.

Modern Era - The Rand Corporation Report

And to try to apply laws from 1400 years ago is illogical. In more recent times, we had what is known as the Rand Corporation Report. It came out a few years back.

The Unchanging Path of Islam

The idea of change, changing with the times, may sound very attractive. However, the fact of the matter is that if Islam was really from Allah, from God, then it should be good for all times.

Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him), on one occasion, when he sat with his companions, he drew a line in the sand. And then he drew lines on either side, branching off. And he explained to the people, to his companions, that the line in the middle was his path.

The path to God. And the lines branching off on either side were paths of deviation, misguidance, with a devil at the end of each one calling people to it. And then he recited a verse from the Quran:

"This is my straight path. So follow it, and do not follow the many other paths. And in that way, deviate. These paths will deviate, take you from that path of Allah."

The path of Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) is one path. It is a path which is good for, not only with time, but for all times. It is a path which has its roots in the Quran, the word of Allah, which was based on human nature.

Allah Almighty who knew what would happen in human society, what changes would take place, He knew the needs of that society. And He prescribed laws which would guide them until the last day. Because He sent His last messenger, Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him). Therefore, the message was the last message.

And that last message was to be a source of guidance for humankind until the last day of this world. Therefore, the issue of modernism, which basically calls Muslims today to not be precise and concerned about the legal aspects of Islam, but to focus more on the devotional aspects, the spirit of Islam, not the letter. This movement focuses currently on female issues, which includes the oppressed Muslim woman.

Focus on Women's Issues

She needs to be brought into the 21st century. Statistics which were mentioned to me today by a non-Muslim, that the most uneducated segment of society here in India is Muslim women. Most uneducated.

So what does that mean? Does that mean that Islam is antiquated, it is outdated, it cannot provide a drive and a force and a means for women to be educated like men? What does it mean? Well, I answered that lady's question when she asked, with the fact that seeking knowledge is compulsory on every Muslim, as Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) said. No distinction between male and female. It is compulsory on both.

Furthermore, the first generation of the first generation of Muslims, who conveyed Islam to us in its entirety, the superstructure of Islam, built on the infrastructure of the Quran, the fourth most prolific narrator of this structure of Islam, from Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him), was the Prophet's wife Aisha. She was the fourth most prolific narrator of Hadiths of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) and a generation of scholars studied under her. So, were it that Islam discouraged learning for women, then the Prophet's wife Aisha would not have been among the leading scholars of that generation.

So really, Islam does not discourage women from education. In fact, it encourages education among women. However, it is within certain bounds, certain principles, that Islam does look at the role of the woman in the family and consider it to be primary.

This is priority that she look after the family. To be agitated and look after the family, that is ideal, that is best. However, as I pointed out to the lady, when people talk about the statistics of the uneducated Muslim women in India, I suggested to her that we should also look at the other set of statistics about the number of aborted females in India.

The children whose lives are taken while they are in the womb. Where is this? Is this amongst the Muslims? No. The highest percentages are among other than Muslims.

The right to life which Islam enshrines forbids the taking of the life of the fetus. So, I am not to say that there are not some Muslims who are disobedient and get involved in this practice also. Yes, there are Muslims who are involved in it too.

But not on the scale of the non-Muslims. Because Islam teaches that the right to life is primary. Taking that child's life is prohibited.

So, if I had to choose, as I said to her, between an ignorant Muslim woman who protects the life of her child and an educated non-Muslim woman who will destroy her child, I would say I would choose that uneducated Muslim woman. So, the Muslim woman who comes under attack. On one hand, we have to admit that Muslims, Muslim men, have been delinquent in fulfilling their responsibility to educate their women.

There is delinquency here. Muslims have not fulfilled their Islamic obligation of educating the women amongst them. There is failure.

Failure not in Islam, but on the part of Muslims. So, what needs to be done here is not modify the teachings of Islam, but wake up Muslims to the responsibility of educating their women. So, we don't need to modernize.

Because Islam never encouraged the ignorance of women. It encouraged their education. Also, with regards to women and their education, as I said, Islam goes a step further.

And it stresses that women who are seeking education should do so in fields which are beneficial to the community. Not just education for the sake of education, which will put them in situations which are un-Islamic, but education for the benefit of the community. So, it has an outlook.

It does focus on the needs of the community. It does address the need, for example, to have Muslim female doctors and dentists, who would serve the needs of the females. The other society doesn't care.

Male, female, anything goes. He's a doctor. You can go to him.

Well, that doctor is a man. Regardless of the oath that he swore and everything else, he's still a man. And as a man, if women are taking off their clothes in front of him, he's going to be affected.

And as such, the numbers of cases of women who are abused, who are molested by doctors, is many. There are many cases of it happening. Maybe it's kept quiet to some degree.

People are ashamed. But it is happening on a big scale. In America, people are not ashamed.

They will speak out against it. So, there are many, many, many cases on record. Doctors jailed for molestation of their patients.

Many cases. So, Islam says, protect the women. By educating women to be doctors and dentists, so they can serve the needs that women have.

And protect them from harm. And protect their faith. And protect their religion.

Attacks on Islamic Laws - Mahr and Bride Burning

And the attacks on Muslim women don't end there. There are attacks concerning divorce laws, concerning inheritance laws, marriage laws, dress, etc. There are many.

For the most part, either what is being called for, addresses a failure amongst Muslims. Where Muslims may be involved, as our brother mentioned, in the evil practice of taking mahr from the women, the family of the women. An evil practice and a custom which comes from another tradition.

And which leads to the death of thousands of women in this country every year. They call them bride burnings. Where that woman's family is not able to provide the money which was promised.

Or they want more. And they can't provide more. So, the husband, the young man and his mother catch the bride in the kitchen, pour kerosene over her and set her on fire.

Thousands of cases of this every year. In order to try to deal with it, the government has banned this mahr business. And some women have reported men who tried to demand mahr.

Few. But Islam had the solution right from the beginning. The mahr was to be given by the man to the woman.

Not even to her family, to the woman. Symbolic of his preparedness to look after her. This is the correct way.

We apply that and the problem is solved. Nothing new. It is the other society which had to introduce new laws to stop it.

Islam already had the laws 1400 years ago.

Scientific Challenges to Islam

If we leave the realm of the women and modernism, the other area of attack is from the field of science. Of course, the attack here is weak.

It doesn't have the kind of strength that scientists had, secularists had with regards to the Bible and the Torah.

Because there are many, many contradictions in the Bible and the Torah, when it was placed in front of the scientific facts. In fact, in the Quran, what we find is that scientifically, what is mentioned in relationship to science is consistent with scientific facts.

There is a portion of things which are mentioned, there is a portion of things mentioned which science doesn't know about. It doesn't say exists or doesn't exist. It doesn't know about it.

It doesn't say it is wrong. It can't because it doesn't have knowledge of it. But what it has knowledge of, what Islam speaks about, in the Quran, is consistent with modern science.

So what the modernists do, is that they leave the Quran and they go then to what? To the Sunnah. The Sunnah of the Prophet. And they try to attack that.

The Hadith of the Fly

And they take out, for example, the hadith of the fly. This is one of the popular hadiths which modernists like to use to discredit hadith literature. Which is the explanation of the Quran.

They take out the hadith of the fly. What does the hadith of the fly say? Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) said, If a fly falls in your drink, dunk him in, push him in under the water, or the milk or whatever, and throw him out. And finish your drink.

Because, under one wing of the fly is disease, and under the other wing is the cure. So they say, Doctors, Lewis Bokai wrote about this in the back of his book, The Quran, The Bible and Science. Doctors only know from the fly disease.

The fly flies on diseased things and it brings those diseases to people. Flies are known for disease. So we don't know of any cure.

So this hadith cannot be acceptable. Cannot be authentic. Even though it is found in the most authentic books, we reject it.

Because it contradicts, as they say, science. But really, does it contradict science? No, it doesn't. The hadith of the fly does not contradict science, really.

It speaks about something which science doesn't know. That's all it's doing. Science knows about the disease.

Right? The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), 1,400 years ago, pointed out, this is another point of the hadith that people don't reflect on. People 1,000 years ago, 1,400 years ago, didn't know that there was disease coming from the fly. The Prophet pointed it out, 1,400 years ago, that it is a carrier of disease.

But he also pointed out that it is a carrier of the cure. Science confirmed, after the development of the microscope, where they could see microbes and the diseases which the fly carries, they said, yes, the fly carries disease. That's 16th century.

16th century. 1,000 years after the time that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said that there was disease in the fly. Since then, they didn't investigate to see if there could be a cure from the fly also.

It's just assumed it's just a source of disease, and that's it. Finished. End of story.

However, if we were to have said to somebody in the 1900s, we said to them, that in snake poison, the poison of the cobra, there is medicine for heart disease. What do you think they would have said then? Well, sounds reasonable. They would have said, you are mad.

You are insane. It is known that if a cobra bites you, the poison will stop your heart and you will die. Yet today, there are cobra farms.

Bangladesh is well known for it. Cobra farms, where the poison of the cobra is milked from the cobra, and extracted from it is medicine used for heart patients. That is the fact of science.

The snake has in his own body the poison which could kill him along with the antidote. If he didn't have the antidote, every time he bit something, he would kill himself. So, he has the antidote within him.

And there are many other plants in the kingdom, which is known, that have both disease and cure. So, it is not something unusual. It exists in the world of science.

The disease and the cure in the same animal or insect, etc. So, the fact that science hasn't discovered it in the fly, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It just means they haven't discovered it.

That's all. So, we have that in one hand. Look on the other hand.

Scientific Validation - Sleeping Position

Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) 1400 years ago told his companions, his followers, not to sleep on their stomachs. He told them, don't sleep on your stomachs. And to discourage them, further he said, that is the way the people of the hellfire lie in the hell.

But he told them, don't sleep on your stomach. When he found his companions sleeping on their stomachs, he would come, nudge them with his foot, told them, don't sleep on your stomach. That was the instructions which

he gave.

For 1400 years, devout Muslims followed that. They slept on their right side, as the Prophet did, or on their backs. They avoided sleeping on their stomachs.

In the 20th century, in the late 70s, early 80s, doctors analyzing the problems of the back, the spine, leading to what they call sway back, people who are hunched over, who can't stand straight, various operations that they have to do to fix the spine. After analyzing those, in an issue of Time magazine, they placed a series of recommendations. On the top of the list of recommendations, they said, don't sleep on your stomach.

Don't sleep on your stomach. They explained that the spine is the heaviest, you know, bone structure of the body. There is nothing to support it.

It's only soft organs in front of it, so it will sag downwards if you lie on your stomach. They said, lie on your side or on your back. That was told 1,400 years ago.

Scientific Validation - Sudden Death Syndrome

Furthermore, in the late 80s, around 1989, British medical scientists doing a survey on children who died in their sleep, babies, one year old, two years old, eight months old, parents put them to sleep and they die. They don't wake up. This is called cot death or SDS, sudden death syndrome.

There are different names for it. They didn't know what caused it. Speculation, but nobody knew.

Scientists in the UK, they gathered data from the families who had a child die amongst them, asking them about the type of mattress that they put the child to sleep on, the type of crib, paint which was used, the atmosphere, what was the temperature in the room, were people smoking in the room. They tried to gather as much data about each of those children. Then they fed it into computer and allowed the computer to correlate it and to bring out the common factors.

Number one factor, children put to sleep on their stomachs. It was common, commonly known amongst the nurses that they would tell parents, tell the mother, if the child has colic, it's crying, it has upset stomach, put them to sleep, put them to lie on their stomachs. That was common knowledge.

People used to do that. However, when the doctors realized this, they put on front pages of the newspapers in the UK, a warning to parents not to put their children to sleep on their stomachs. Their babies, don't put them to sleep on their stomachs, they instructed the hospitals across the country to advise parents not to do this.

Nine years later, in 1998, when they did an analysis of the rate of cot death, they found that it had dropped almost 70%. Their research was passed on to other parts of the world, in the US, etc., and it spread. But here was something.

One might have said, it is enough to know that it causes back problems, but here was something else that it can lead to the death of children. This is something, the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him), spoke about 1,400 years ago.

Do We Need to Modernize Islam?

So, do we need to modernize Islam? No, we don't.

We may need to modernize Muslims, in the sense that, they need to educate themselves, they need to get involved in society, building institutions, etc. They need to go back to Islam, and to practice it, as it should be practiced. Yes.

But modernize Islam? No. The teachings of Islam stand. No matter how the West may paint them, like the cutting off the hand of the thief, there is a website on the internet.

The Law of Cutting the Hand of the Thief

When you go into it, it shows you a picture of the hand, 3D. And it talks about the miracle of the hand. How, you know, the muscles, the ligaments, the bones work, and show this beautiful, wonderful creation of God, the hand.

Then at the end of it, it says, and Muslims cut it off. And Muslims cut it off. Well, if we go into the societies, where Muslims cut the hand of the thief, what we find is a society, which is secure.

In Saudi Arabia, and I lived there for 20 years. I lived in Riyadh for 14 years, in different parts of the city. And I can honestly say, that for those 14 years, I never locked my front door.

Closed it, but latching and locks and chains, never did it. And nobody entered my home. Nor my neighbor's home.

And when I spoke to many non-Muslims, who lived there, you shouldn't be looking at, pluck it out. Library, and you steal a library book, your hand will not be cut off, because you have a part of it. If you steal from something, meaning, it has fallen from somebody's pocket, for example.

And you pick it up, finders keepers. You're not supposed to do that. You may be punished for it, but they won't cut your hand off.

Temptation is there. Whose hand is cut off? It is the professional thief. The pickpocket.

How do you think somebody learns to pick a pocket? You think anybody can just go and pick a pocket? No. You have to train for it. How to distract the person? Your partner, who will bounce the person from the other side,

while the person is turning, your hand goes in the pocket of the person.

We may use these terms, but we don't. Modernism, is a trend, which challenges Islam right now, and Muslims. It is a part of the globalization of Western culture.

To get a form of people that succeed in globalizing, and start revolting, that is there, that country, those countries, countries of the West, have gone down. Have gone down morally. Corruption is rampant.

Families are falling apart. This is the consequence. When people stray away from the laws of God, and put it all in the hands of men, then our foundation for society becomes lost.

Conclusion

Islam stands as it was 1,400 years ago. Not in need of any modernization, but only in need of implementation. This is the challenge before us today, my brothers and sisters.

To implement Islam. To make Islam real. To show what Islam has to offer, in India, in the world.

We have a beautiful way of life. We have the ultimate way to establish peace in society. We have it.

But we are not utilizing it. We are not practicing it. So instead, we are looked at as terrorists.

We are looked at as backward, as oppressors of women, etc, etc, etc. This is all a consequence of our deviation from Islam. And our success ultimately lies with returning to the teachings of Islam.

With that, as with the earlier generations, we will find success. Only there. So, I conclude, calling all of you to reassess our current situation.

And to commit ourselves sincerely to Islam. To make a change in the way things have been going to this point. To have an impact on the society.

To contribute to this country. Part of God's world. Let us commit ourselves, recommit ourselves, to practicing Islam.

And to building the necessary institutions to promote Islam.

Question and Answer Session

If you have a second question, you will need to go to the rear of the line before answering that second question. If you write down your question, the question will have a second priority.

It is better that you get to the microphone, or have someone else go to the microphone for you to ask that question. My Muslims who are with us this evening, I'm not going to call you out, but I want you to know that this forum is an excellent opportunity for you to give us some feedback and to clarify any misconceptions you have on any subject that is Islam. We make a priority for you at the microphones, so if there are any non- Muslims here in the audience tonight, contact any volunteer that you see in the aisles, and they will assist you in getting to the front of the line to ask your questions.

Your questions may not be limited to this topic, but I ask that they do be brief. And if you simply want to make a comment or a criticism, you may also do that. Do not fear anyone's anger for something that you might say.

You are welcome in this audience to say anything that you need to say, but I ask you to please keep it brief. With no further ado, keeping this very short, I now bring Dr. Bilal Holmes back to the microphone for question and answers. I remind everyone that this event will be immediately following this question and answer session, so that the isha prayer will be immediately following this question and answer session.

Question 1: Women as Leaders in Islam

The gentleman in the front will begin with a question for me. We'll then go to a real mic, and I believe he'll be taking two questions at a time from the sister section. Brother, could you please state your name and ask a question?

Questioner: Assalamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh. My name is Mundo Mohammed Amin. I am a businessman. My question is, in modern Islam, people are accepting women as their leader. I have a question for Dr. Philips, whether we approve ladies as our ruler from the Islamic point of view?

Answer: No, we don't.

Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him), in a hadith from Sahih al-Bukhari, where it was mentioned to him that a woman had become the queen of Persia, had become the ruler of Persia.

He said: "A people who choose as their leader a woman will not succeed."

[Sahih al-Bukhari]

So, the position held in Islam is that ultimate leadership, it doesn't mean a woman can't be the head of a school, head of a hospital, other institutions, but as the head of states, the ultimate leader of the country, Islam recommends that that position be held by a man. That is the strong recommendation.

The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) did not forbid it. He did not forbid that a woman lead. He didn't forbid it.

But he advised against it. That it would lead to the failure of the society. And it does represent importance on the part of the society.

And that is why places like the US, which is one of the strongest nations, they have no female presidents. All of the presidents since its beginning have had men. Britain had men until more recently as it became weaker, lost its power.

Then you saw female rulers appear more often. Similarly in France and the other big countries of the West, it is not a common phenomenon.

Thank you for your question.

Question 2: Ijtihad and Modernism

We'll take a question from the viewer section. There is a mic. Could you please state your name and occupation?

Questioner: Assalamu alaikum. This is Salamuddin Ayubi and I'm a software engineer by profession. My question is with regard to Ijtihad. There are some scholars who say that Ijtihad leads to modernism or bid'ah, an innovation. And there are some others who say that if you consider the Sunnah, it is agreed upon that Ijtihad is permitted in Islam. So what's your position with regard to Ijtihad in an Islamic sense?

Answer: With regards to Ijtihad, modernists may use the call to Ijtihad as a door for them to change their religion. Ijtihad meaning making new rulings for new circumstances. Right? Islam in general left the door for Ijtihad open, but that is Ijtihad of the scholars.

Not any person, any lay person, anybody without scholarship making Ijtihad. Not in terms of the rules of Islam, making judgments, making laws. No.

That is left to scholars. Those who closed the door of Ijtihad, did so in ignorance. And that led to stagnation.

Historically it is well known. From the 13th century with the fall of Baghdad, this door for Ijtihad was closed by the scholars of that time. And they promoted the blind following of the Madhabs.

Because that is where you end up. If there is no Ijtihad, then you just have Madhabs. You forgot to follow one of them.

You know? And that led to what it led to, in terms of corruption. So much so that it was ruled that it was not permissible for a Hanafi to marry a Shafi. That is with the closing of the door of Ijtihad.

This is the corruption that came out of it. And so on and so forth. So, the basic position is that the door of Ijtihad is open for the scholars.

Not for people without qualification. It is like the door for brain operations. It is open for every brain surgeon.

But not for any doctor who feels like checking it out. Same basic principle.

Thank you for the question.

Question 3: Marrying Cousins and Birth Defects

Do you have a question? Could you please state your name and occupation, and we will go to state your question.

Questioner: I am Yasmeen Ghalizi. I am a doctor. My question is about marrying cousins and birth defects.

Answer: This question is related. Because it is a scientific challenge to Islam, which calls for a reassessment. But what they are basically talking about is marrying cousins. Right? That it is commonly said, that frequent marriage of cousins leads to, you know, defects, birth defects, and these kinds of things.

Right? Where children are born with cleft lips, and a variety of different birth defects, as a result of continual marriage of cousins. But reality is that, marriage of cousins in and of itself, has not been proven scientifically to cause this. Medical studies have not established this.

This is an assumption which has been made. In the medical profession, it has become well known, commonly circulated. But it has not been established scientifically.

It is, you could say, an opinion held, which has become commonly accepted. But fact of the matter, from my readings, this has not been scientifically established. But in any case, even if it is, they are talking about continual marriages.

Especially in societies, like in where you have certain segments of the society, like amongst the ruling families in Europe, where everybody married amongst themselves, and it was a very small and limited group, that you started to see these kinds of birth defects appearing. Or it was said to be caused by this. In any case, Islam does not teach a preference for marrying cousins.

Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) married twelve women. Only one out of the twelve was a cousin. Only one out of the twelve was a cousin.

So Islam does not recommend marriage to cousins. It permits it. The example of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) is to marry outside of the group.

Outside of the family. Within other families. From other societies.

Sophia was from a Jewish extraction. Maria was from an Egyptian extraction. And so on and so forth.

He married women from a variety of different backgrounds, outside of his family structure. And that is what Islam recommends. That is preferable.

Thank you.

Question 4: Islamic Economics and Interest (Riba)

I'll take another question from the sister section. Do you have another question from the sister section? Okay, we're going to be in front of the middle section in a while. And then we're going to go straight to the main and then we're going to go to the pre-conception question.

Questioner: So my name is Nouriel Hassan. I am from Madras. For your wonderful speech, we are very grateful to you. But you have not touched the economic section, economic aspects of modern Muslims. We are in India living in a non-Islamic state. The concept of interest, before the interest, nobody is giving the money. What is the solution for it?

Answer: I did mention Riba, interest. That the modernists have proposed that this is permissible. What is the solution for it? Well, the solution was started back in the 70s, when the first Islamic bank was set up. When the idea of Islamic banking was floated, the western economic and banking institutions laughed.

And they scoffed at it. They said, what a joke. Banking without interest? Who ever heard of that?

Not realizing that interest banking was something which happened only a few hundred years before. Prior to that, people's economic dealings in Europe was without interest, because there was no interest with Israel. When Muslims started this, it took off. So much so, that today, all of your leading banks, HSBC, Citibank, Bank of London, all of your major banks around the world, have branches for Islamic banking.

That is the answer. The solution. The alternative.

What I say here, is that, with nearly 200 million Muslims here in India, the fact that they do not have Islamic banks, where Muslims can put their money, have it invested without interest, I will say, that is an indictment of the Muslims of India. That is their failure. Their failure to establish alternatives.

When they have millionaires and billionaires in their midst, but they are using the money, in a way which is not pleasing to Allah. They are only taking out of it for their own pleasure. Their own self aggrandizement.

Rather than seeing, in the blessing which Allah has given them, a responsibility to help the rest of the Muslim community, find alternatives for economics. Islamic alternatives for economic dealings in this country. It is their duty.

And they, each and everyone, who is in a position to establish an Islamic alternative, and does not do so, they carry the sin of the community forced to deal in interest. Not to say, that each and every individual, who ends up dealing in interest, gets off the hook. That they are excused.

No. They still have to answer to Allah. Because, in the end, dealing in interest is a choice.

In most cases, 99.9% of the cases, people choose to deal in interest.

Thank you for that question.

Question 5: Language and Cultural Divisions Among Muslims

I am still looking for some more questions. We are in a cave. We are coming to the back mic. What is your situation now in the occupation?

Questioner: My name is Deepak. I work as a sales executive. My question is not related to modernization. It is like, among Muslims, why there are differences? Tamil speaking Muslims, Hindi speaking Muslims, Malay speaking Muslims, and why people don't, among themselves there are divisions, like Rauta, Maragayar, and they don't marry among, you know, like, they don't marry Urdu speaking Muslims, Tamil speaking Muslims. Why is it so?

Answer: First question, why are there Muslims speaking different languages? Because Islam is a religion of the whole world. That's why we find Muslims speaking all of your major languages of the world.

We have Muslims speaking Malay, in Indonesia, in Malaysia, Muslims speaking Filipino, in Philippines, Muslims speaking Chinese, Mongolian, in China, in Russia, wherever we go in the world, we have Muslims speaking the language of the area in which they exist. Okay. So that's why we have Muslims speaking all the different languages, rather than all Muslims speaking one language.

Now, there is one universal language which Muslims share, and that is Arabic. And that's why they're able to pray with each other wherever they are in the world. Arabic is the bonding language which links them so they can pray together in congregation anywhere in the world.

With regards to what you perceive as communities among Muslims not marrying each other, this is from their deviations from the teachings of Islam. Islam doesn't teach that. Islam is against that.

But this is their ignorance. This is their own habits which they have given precedence to their customs over Islamic teachings. Because otherwise, Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) had said that if a person comes to ask for your daughter in marriage, and you are pleased with his religion and his character, then you should marry your daughter to him.

Regardless of his background. Otherwise, there will be corruption in the land. So Islam really speaks very strongly against this practice that you are speaking of.

And in other communities, we don't find as much as we may find here in India. It is less. It may vary from place to place.

But Islamic teachings, according to the teachings of Islam, the early generations, if you look at the history of Muslims in different parts of the world, in Spain, in India, and elsewhere, they married freely amongst each other and gave strict marriages to small family groups, giving them names like Sayyids, and things like this. It wasn't a practice. This is a deviation from Islamic teachings that you are observing.

Okay?

Question 6: Cloning in Islam

Do you have another question? Same. But I have found that people still do that thing. They mention. Do you have other questions? People are here.

Okay. Sister, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but we've been doing this conference for a long time. If you have any misconceptions, I'm sorry. Go ahead with your questions.

Well, these questions have come to you, brother, and the sister has wanted that to explain, explanation for the questions which have already come to you. No questions have come to us. Okay. Here are some questions.

In place of haram, I would like to know whether shaykh Bahauddin was permitted or not. Is this, in your technical existence, in your own existence? This is a quick question that should be withheld, after I ask that the Muslims keep their questions brief and on this topic, and do you have a question on this topic?

Question: Is cloning halal and haram? And would you like to know whether it's in any of the verses?

Answer: Shaykh Bahauddin, do you think that's on the topic? Not really. It's not really on the topic. But generally speaking, in relationship to the issue of cloning...

Cloning... Wealth involves human beings. Cloning would be unacceptable. Wealth involves human beings. Cloning in the animal kingdom and in the vegetable kingdom for the benefit of human beings is acceptable.

If we clone a particular strain of rice or wheat or whatever because it is strong and it's able to withstand disease and things like this, there is no harm. This is knowledge which Allah has given us. If we do it in the animal kingdom, like cloning a cow that has been genetically modified to produce insulin in its milk, insulin which normally is a very difficult process to gain.

It is possible to put a gene into a cow so that the next generation of cows will give insulin in their milk. So then such a cow you want to clone to increase the number because if the next generation will be lost again, you clone to produce this for the benefit of human society, this is permissible.

But when it comes to the cloning of human beings, the intention behind it is evil. The intention behind it is evil. Because people in the plan to clone human beings either have the intent to produce spare parts for an existing

human being, that's what you're going to do, right, you take a few cells from yourself and you produce another version of yourself. Why? So you can have spare parts.

When a heart runs out, you can take a heart out, put it in, you know, something else goes wrong, you take it out, you put it in, you're looking for spare parts. But what happens is that that cloned human being is not you. Not anymore than your child is you who was formed from your sperm.

It is your sperm that has produced that child, along with the organ of your wife, but it's not you. And if we are able to clone a human being, it will not be you. You cannot say, this is my extra body that I can take my spare parts from.

No. So the intent is evil. We're not looking to reproduce another you for any other intent than for you to be able to live, to become immortal, the same trick which Satan played on Adam.

So cloning from that perspective will be considered haram.

Thank you.

Closing Remarks

That was the final question of the evening, as time has now run out.

I thank you all for your attendance and your questions and your patience.

And I remind you all that the isha prayer will now be performed in the masjid. Sisters can come to these sisters.

END OF LECTURE

May Allah guide us all to the straight path and grant us success in implementing Islam in our lives.