Reddit comments from April 2025

I have not had the free time to investigate this but from the preliminary research I saw he is closer to ICMA than traditional hadith methods for sure. He still relies heavily on ilm al-rijal literature and wasn't critical of it in a special way as far as I can tell. More needs to be done to investigate and understand this.

Shaykh al Islam isn't a formal title unless it's associated with a post like senior judge. Anyone can call anyone else shaykh al islam. Even relatively minor figures have occasionally been called that by others

Faqih usually has a specific metric by the medieval period/golden age, which is someone who has gone beyond become a mufti by receiving license to issue fatwa through studying a mu'tamad text. Muhadith is more quantifiable than shaykh al Islam for sure but not as specific as faqih.

It's very hard for me to determine what metric was used to call Abu Ismail al-Harawi "shaykh al-Islam" versus Abu Uthman al-Sabuni versus ibn Daqiq al-Īd versus ibn Hajr al-Haytami. Some who were Qira'at scholars, others were masters of many sciences, others were Sufis, etc.

Ibn Abd al-Wahhab did not produce any single work of notable scholarly repute. All of his works are pamphlets for layfolk. Yet he is also called shaykh al-Islam.

It honestly tells you more about the person calling someone that than the person being described with that title.

I saw this. It makes no sense. Fun movie

I don't think you understood the argument in my post or the wider consequences of systemic reasoning. You're still phrasing your response from within the myth of a secular neutrality. Are you an apologist for secularism? Do you think that secularism can't be wrong?

There are some key flaws in Yasir Qadhi's issue of istighatha and tawassul here. Admittedly, he is at a disadvantage as neither the proponents of Ibn Abd al-Wah'hab's views (such as Sultan al-Umayri) or his detractors (Hatim al-Awni)…

There are clear Sunni ahadith prohibiting mut'ah.

I don't know where your information is coming from. One of the conditions mentioned in every advanced book of Fiqh for a valid nikkah is that both partners intend to stay married. Any future intention of divorce renders it mut'ah which is invalid, haram, and becomes zina on the part of the offending party. Your arguments are based on missing key details from Sunni fiqh.

I find it incredibly strange that we are still criticizing al-Azami's History of the Quranic text over 22 years after it's publication. A criticism was warranted at the time of publication or perhaps a decade after, but the field has…

This is such a bizarre interpretation considering the essential nonexistence of such short term marriages in Sunni societies. What you have failed to acknowledge is that, even if legally intentions cannot be considered, most Muslims throughout history believe in an Afterlife. So, they fear the consequences of entering into a marriage under false pretenses. Furthermore there is huge social opporobrium around unjustified divorce on the part of men and stigma around divorced women.

The Sunni fiqh ban on mut'ah definitely lead to an actual ban. This ban wasn't enforced by courts because all premodern societies were bottom-up organized.

Your tripartite argument assumes people entering into a marriage aren't considering the social or spiritual consequences of their actions. Then you relegate fiqh to the fuqaha (as if the average person didn't know mutah is haram) and try to distinguish the law from ethics. Then you have created this scenario where fiqh needs to "update" itself to accomodate...?

I honestly think you're not engaging with my criticisms and would like if you can actually engage with an argument I made instead of calling me an apologist. Please point out a flaw in an actual argument I made.

I would find it more credulous if we didn't have Jonathan Brown directly engaging with Joshua Little, and Little then retorting. There is an actual (semi-?) ongoing discussion between a traditionally trained academic and a secular academic on the exact topic of hadith.

I can appreciate that. I think traditionalist hadith scholars are mostly disinterested in researching/publishing in this field. I'm admittedly not (yet) an expert in hadith from either side of the equation. I still think Azami's work is essentially outdated and while Motzki is closer than Little for example, right now Brown seems to be the most active. More work has to be done from traditionalists to engage with the current state of the field for sure.

I did find a 2015 book by a Dr. Muhammad Saeed Rahawan that discusses ICMA but I haven't purchased it yet. It's about the Prophet's biography. "Early Sources for Prophet Muhammad's Biography"

https://www.reddit.com/r/MuslimAcademics/s/YmVzdrd0cI

I'm not sure I agree totally. I believe you can do cross critique and criticism. It just requires you to "enter" the other model to evaluate it, i.e. tanzīl jadalī.

I think we agree but it's just semantics. However once you have been in both worlds and understood them I believe you can do a metacritique.

Down for me

When I was 22 I was open to marrying 40+ year olds even with kids. Was rejected flatly. Now that I'm older I have options. That was my experience

I'm not justifying it. I'm saying young marriage can be unrealistic if not literally impossible. Furthermore just being older & desirable still doesn't make marriage realistic for a lot of reasons. At a certain point as a man you begin to question the value and risk-reward calculation of marriage once you're used to being single until 30+. Decentering women becomes a neccesary coping mechanism and sometimes you can't undo that