[Video] Yasir Qadhi’s Shocking Agenda to Reform Islam

Just a humble observation. It often feels like people miss the forest for the trees in the dawah scene, especially on the youtube scene. Rather than focusing and the actual problems impacting most Muslims in the West, which IMO is learning about and being engaged with their Deen, youtubers are obsessively focused on this phenomenon of refuting people – the “celebrity shuyookh” as they’re often referred to here. I genuinely wonder if you’d ever consider whether there’s more harm than good in your approach to this matter? When you take a step back and look at Islam in the United States, after the Civil Rights act in 1965 was passed, you had an influx of immigrant Muslims settling down here who established institutions / Masajids and starting laying the groundwork for a lot of the Muslim community as we see it today. When you dive deeper and assess the Islamic institutions within Muslim communities, you find one of the big gaps that was materializing was getting first / second generation Muslims to stay engaged and learn about their Deen from sources they could connect with, leading to severe knowledge gaps. Most communities originally relied on (and some still to this day rely on) “overseas Imams” who just aren’t effectively able to connect with younger or American born Muslims. I would reference the fact that Allah sent Prophets and Messengers from a people to the people as a piece of evidence of how important it is to have people from the culture who speak the native tongue as a core principle of effectively giving Dawah to a people. This eventually starts leading us down a road where you had an entire generation of American born Muslims who were struggling to connect to the “local shuyookh” to learn their Deen, putting generations at risk in terms of keeping their faith. Whatever your feelings are towards YQ or Omer Suleiman or Al Maghrib – there is an entire generation of American born first / second generation Muslims that have had the ability to connect to their faith solely because of their voices. By undermining them, or questioning them, or increasing levels of distrust of them – you’re essentially telling thousands of young American born Muslims who have primarily leaned on these figures to connect with their Deen that their faith / grasp of Islam is questionable. I guess I question the wisdom of that approach? Moreover, what are your solutions to actually address the problem above and solve the issues of the knowledge crisis? Because despite all the refutations of those figures, they actually put in work and made effort to help with some of the underlying root problems for Islam to thrive in the West. Most youtubers are so busy dropping refutations without providing any sort of supplemental solutions to address the root cause of these sort of problems. These “celebrity shuyookh” rose to prominence because they were effective in addressing said problems and helping thousands connect to the faith of Islam when most people were void of resources to turn to. You can keep dropping refutations of person X or person Y – but person X and person Y at least took a stab at solving the root problems impacting the core of our communities – which is connecting an American born audience with their faith because the local institutions and Masajids didn’t have the resources or the ability to connect with said audience. But anyways, I appreciate the content on Atheism and all of the -isms. May Allah reward you and the team. With that said, the youtube scene is getting to be cancerous. This refutation culture is so cancerous because it lacks the slightest semblance of humility IMO. Folks drop videos with absolute yaqeen that they’re on the haqq and they’re doing the work of haqq. It lacks a level of humility and it doesn’t seem folks ask themselves: “What becomes of me if I’m not on the haqq in doing this or if my judgement on this matter is off…” Umar ibn Khattab feared for himself as being amongst the hypocrites, and that was Umar ibn Khattab. I think that wisdom is severely missing in the youtube Dawah scene. Folks are really quick to upload without thinking of the downstream consequences of their actions. Youtube refutationists are essentially eroding trust of knowledge in general – not just specific figures they think they’re targeting. Youtube is flooded with videos attacking just about every shaykh. IMO, it leads our coming generations where they eventually ask, who can you trust? And that’s how knowledge is lost IMO.And Allah knows best. May Allah forgive me if I said anything incorrect.Salaam to all and jazakAllahu Khayran.

Hermeneutics – https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HermeneuticsQuote from wiki *** Hermeneutics (/ˌhɜːrməˈnjuːtɪks/)[1] is the theory and methodology of interpretation,[2][3] especially the interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and philosophical texts.[4][5] Hermeneutics is more than interpretative principles or methods used when immediate comprehension fails and includes the art of understanding and communication.[6]*** UnquoteOur mujtahid imams from the first few centuries of Islam have employed ijtihad and established fiqh principles and rulings of the madhahib. For newer matters like bitcoin for example, we still need to do ijtihad based on the established principles and rulings of fiqh.Reformists using “hermeneutics” is much like using iterative methods in computational mathematics for even established matters of deen like 5 daily prayers!