your article was intellectually stimulating, jazak Allahu khairan, and a good reminder as well. it made me think quite deeply about how we spend our time and where we put our energies… following are just a few thoughts:

1 – we fail to prioritize, and don’t know the difference between immediate and important concerns: what i mean by that is while we have important issues (such as learning usul al fiqh) we also have immediate concerns, like working on the social ills you mention. the case is analagous to a man with a large gash on his leg being treated for light bleeding on the arms – first the immediate concern has to be taken care of, and then the other important matters are more easily addressed.

2 – we have problems with application. Umm Zaid mentioned that were we to learn from proper sources, and were our methodology sound, we would necessarily see a change in our communities. Now, everyone seems to have taken that to mean she thinks that just by sitting on the floor and learning from someone who learned from someone in the deserts of wherever we’re going to solve our problems – i don’t think she meant that at all. more fundamental to the essence of traditionalism than sitting on the floor is 1) balance and 2) implimentation. if we’re sincere in learning, we’re going to act, and the more we act, the more learned we will become. Ill mention balance a bit more below.

3 – we are very impatient: we have pressing needs, and we forget that such problems take a while to fix. Things are built up with difficulty, destroyed with ease, and rebuilt with more difficulty. we want our problems to go away right away, but we need to apply consistent effort for, perhaps, generations. this brings me to my last point –

4 – we need to balance: proper action cannot come without knowledge. one cannot go about cleaning up society if they are themselves filthy. thus, they have to have a certain level of spiritual purity, which comes with learning and practicing. similarly, one cannot deal with the problems of society if they don’t have the requisite knowledge. in arabic they say an hour of planning is better than an age of (unplanned) work. Furthermore, each of us is responsible for carrying this deen to the next generation: we have to study if we are to persist in learning if Islam is to live on through us; at the same time we need to act if those around us, including our own children, will perceive Islam as relevant enough to learn from us.

@Hood and Umm Zaid – I’m a student of the “traditionalist” movement and well, I think the scholars and (active) students of knowledge should be traditionalists. That being said, after taking at least two classes at the Sunnipath academy (and being a Teachers Assistant) which for the most part were fairly good, there was nothing “traditional” about them although their presentation was fairly good. My point is that only in a traditional setting can one really excel using a traditional approach. For those of us that are non-traditional students whom typically have families, traditionalism isn’t really going to cut it. I’m not sure how many jobs Imam Nawawi was working when he was studying and he obviously wasn’t married so that cuts out most of us as traditional students since we can be referred to as Abu or Umm. One can only try to apply the wisdom of the tradition in a method that students can get the most out of it while still living with their families and making other non-studying contributions to their communities. A point to note and add as well is that like Hood said, I’m not sure how many mutoon that the sahaba went through but my guess is none, however, they still learned their fard al ayn proficiently and worshipped Allah with great vigor and humility. May Allah be pleased with them and allow us to derive more benefit and barakah like them, ameen.

Now not everyone can master hadith sciences or fiqh; its not possible. I agree with Hood that you need people who work at different levels in order to make life and the world work.

Umm Zaid
Perhaps the sciences are not being mastered, but it is a bit of a jump to write off the teaching of those sciences as not “…being taught and learned through authentic, reliable methods…” as if some how that would magically change the peoples situation even if they were.
Perhaps because we see our situations as superior (and they must be because then we would’nt be in them) we tend to denounce other situations as unauthentic. We can go on with the tug-o-war of shaykhs and methodologies, but that i think may be the point of the post; its a waste of time.
“The hearts are receptacles” as Ali (may Allah be pleased with him) said. The thing is we are trying to pour oil in the water container and then wondering why they don’t mix.

Which brings me to what Marc said:

Marc,
I agree, there is an emphasis on somewhat esoteric topics being important for community development more than there is for pracitical pragmatic solutions.
Matn-of-the-Month in whatever science is not getting me a job, paying rent, or raising my iman. I’m not against traditional teaching, but it is not for everyone, which may be why Jumu’ah is obligatory only once a week, because most people can’t handle too much information. Many people in the time of the Prophet and thereafter were inculcated with the basics of iman and adab, and then left to build productive lives, and at times of trouble referred to the scholars or their local judge.
There is a strange idea amongst Muslims that we will only be a strong community when we have a masjid full of Tullab al-’Ilm. It’s kind of like when people claim Native American ancestry; everyones grandmama was a cherokee princess, but I wonder who gathered berries and hunted deer? It is a Quranic reality that we will have different levels of people, and that is part of what make life work.
Most of it (regardless of ideological background)lies in escapism and a utopic vision of life. The only utopia we will have is in Jannah; trial and tribulation are a fact of life.

Thanks for dropping in. I appreciate the link. I will check out your online venture in a few moments.

Cheers,

– M

The thing is, I don’t even think much knowledge is being propogated. With all respect due, I just don’t think that usul al fiqh or hadith are being mastered in Philly.

Ha!, well, yes, that is true and I suppose I was trying to be too kind and tried to illustrate that in a more subtle way, but that is one of the side points I did want to make. That in addition to studying things that will have little to no positive benefit [in the immediate] I too, highly doubt that any such knowledge is really changing hands. But I guess I wanted to stress what was being sought versus any qualitative analysis of whether or not they are truly learning those sciences.

And to further push my point through, even if they were really learning usul al-fiqh, I still would ask, “is this what they ought to be studying given their present condition?” I fail to see how usul al-fiqh will eradicate poverty, raise AIDS awareness, create economic and educational opportunities and so forth.

Thanks for the comments – it helped me to look at my own argument more critically.

Salaams

The thing is, I don’t even think much knowledge is being propogated. With all respect due, I just don’t think that usul al fiqh or hadith are being mastered in Philly. I don’t think they’re being mastered in most other places in the US either. If the knowledge was being taught and learned through authentic, reliable methods, then I think you would see a difference, because you can’t help but turn to the world around you when you’ve learned from a true master.

But having been to these types of events before, what you’re often getting is less than substandard, and like everything else, it’s all about a rule book and adhering to this rule book. It’s Islam As the Bare Minimum, communities where people believe the way to live a marriage is to demand of each other their basic rights and give their basic responsibilities and expect no less and give no more. Lowest Common Denominator Islam.

So people might be obsessed with it, but my personal view is that at the end of the day, they’re not even getting that much out of it, b/c if they were, they’d be acting on it. That’s real knowledge, imnsho.