[Music] [Music] we continue our examination of the fourth pillar of religion the fourth of which is the discussion on Imam the belief in the successorship after or the prophet sallallah alai We examined previously the conditions of an Imam in Sunni discourse and theology how does a person become an Imam We examined that now we will examine IM in beliefs according to the path of what are the conditions for an IM how does a person become an IM to begin with what is the role of the Imam these are very significant discussions that have to do
with the core of our faith so it is very important for us to discuss this in depth and in detail according to sh theology imama is not a secondary issue like we see in Sunni beliefs it is in fact part of religion part of Dean it's part of not part of the branches of Faith As We examined last week IM is exactly like the position of prophethood with the only difference that the Imam does not receive official Revelation the prophet is chosen by God the prophet is infallible the same applies to the IM the only
difference really is that the prophet receives official Revelation and delivers that message to the people whereas the Imam does not receive official Revelation otherwise all conditions that you find in a prophet are found in the Imam this is because the IM fills pretty much the same role that a prophet does what is the role of a prophet let's ask the prophet has many roles but three are very important one role of the Prophet sallallahu alaih Al was to explain the Holy Quran to provide the proper application for the quranic verses to cl to clarify that
which is ambiguous that which is not clear the prophet doesn't just recite verses to us no he explains to us the meaning and the of those verses Allah states in the Holy Quran Allah says we have revealed down the Quran the the remembrance so that you explain to the people you clarify to the people that's one role of the Prophet another role of the Prophet is to respond to questions anyone who has a question Muslim non-muslim difficult question easy question the prophet would answer those questions on behalf of Allah subhah wa ta'ala and number three
the prophet would explain legal issues and matters that people face in their everyday lives these are the three main roles of the Prophet let's ask the following question when the prophet sallallahu alai Al passed away and departed there was a big gap the prophet was fulfilling these three roles when he passed away who fulfills these roles for us there is a now a big G Gap in the Muslim um who's going to explain the proper of Quran who's going to answer the questions to defend the religion and explain religion who's going to explain to people
legal matters we have here two options two ideas two paths let's choose one of them two possibilities either the umah is mature enough and qualified enough such that they could fulfill this very important role they could undertake these responsibilities offer the proper T they answer people's questions they defend the religion they explain legal issues that's one possibility the other possibility is for the prophet to appoint someone who who represents him and he will fulfill this role really these are the two possibilities that we have otherwise you have a gap you have a void you have
to fill it somehow Allah is not just going to leave us to try to you know figure this out when this is part of our faith Allah has to show us let's look at the first possibility that the umah is qualified enough they can figure it out themselves what do you think about this that the can figure it out themselves the of the Quran all that knowledge all those legal details answering tough questions the biggest proof that the umah cannot figure this out is all the disagreements that we have when it comes to the Holy
Quran pick up the books ofas the books of EXO Jesus you will find in almost every verse there's differences of opinion so where's the correct where's the correc T of the Quran obviously this the um is not solving this dilemma for us because the umah have thousands of views whose view do you take who there is no unanimous agreement that this is the of the Quran as an example the um cannot fulfill this for us even basic everyday issues like wo the verse of the woo in which Allah T says wash your face your two
you know hands arms and then your feet Allah says wipe your head and then your feet do what to your feet wash the feet according to the Sunni understanding of the verse or wipe the mess on the feet according to the explanation of the and the Shia understanding which one do you choose the um is just going to confuse you right if you want to leave matters to the umah they're going to confuse you so we cannot possibly say that the umah over here can figure things out for us look at very important issues like
predestination free will after the prophet sallallahu alaih there was chaos in the Muslim um some Muslims believed in Pre destination everything we do we're predestined to you don't have free will really God decides everything and everything you do every action you commit is done by God and then you had different sects what does guidance mean these very important matters the umah were split about them would God deliver the truth to me through a split umah that they cannot even agree on anything really even God look at their disagreements on God the qualities of God the
attributes of God it justice is that part of the attributes of God some yes say yes some say no as we saw last year when we talked about the justice of God and the view right even simple things like that there is no unanimous agreement so the umah cannot fulfill the role of a prophet the prophet gives you clear truths the prophet does not confuse you the prophet gives you H 100% H the um confuses you so the um cannot take the position of a prophet when it comes to explaining the truths to the newer
Generations who are not there yes uh you said the can't ful theet for we're following people like we we'll get to that we'll mention that very briefly let's take this step by step so our question is is a logical question will God appoint someone to show us the truths or Allah subh says the prophet departed you guys figure it out somehow is that logical for Allah T to do something like that let's look at issues the Holy Quran if you examine those verses that speak about legal matters rulings they're only 300 verses out of 6,000
and you know some 600 6,236 verses only 300 verses talk about legal matters the prophet in his lifetime did not explain every legal issue the Quran does not in detail explain every legal issue so you need someone after the prophet to explain what the prophet sallallahu alai did not have the opportunity to examine in depths so as for the Hadith from the prophet sallallahu alaih about legal matters there about 500 so do you think that is sufficient for all these generations to come after and they have thousands of legal issues 500 hadiths and 300 verses
is that sufficient to cover the very details of course not many many times Omar and Abu Bakr would be asked questions and they did not know the answer to because there was no precedent during the time of the Prophet sallallahu alaih they couldn't remember a a Hadith from the prophet a situation uh an incident an event a precedent in order to answer questions like that the prophet sallallah alai Al in Mecca did not have the freedom to explain legal matters the Muslims were persecuted the prophet's priority was in Mecca just the belief in God and
the day of judgment really kept it simple when he went to Medina so many problems were there Civil Wars establishing a community Hypocrites to deal with the prophet spent a lot of time defending his community sometimes when he would go to war it could take two months for him to go settle there and come back so the prophet did not have enough time to explain all legal details so after the prophet you would see those cffs were asked question question they did not know the answer to I'll give you a couple of quick examples when
AB Bak was Theif a drunk man a man who was drunk a drunken man was brought to him now according to the Holy Quran if these conditions are fulfilled there's a punishment for that you get penalized for getting drunk in Muslim Society you know there's lashing the Quran talks about it when he was presented before the proph before Abu Bakr he told him oh Abu Bakr I lived in an environment in family circumstances in which I really did not know drinking alcohol was forbidden I did not know I was not aware of this law what
do you do now Abu Bakr is thinking is there a president in the prophet's life did that ever happen he thought and he thought he couldn't figure that out so in the end he got stuck and he told him I don't know what to do with you I don't have the law I don't have the legal ruling now is this possible that Allah will leave the um with a kff who doesn't know how to address an incident like that in the end of course they always had to resort to who IM Ali and he solved
the situation talks about it he elaborates on this incident he says IM came he he explained to them that this is the ruling if this person really did not know was not aware that this is forbidden by Allah then yes this person will not be punished this person will not be flogged or lashed but you have but he has to prove that IMI asked him you never heard of the verse that says alcohol is Haram you never heard of that he says no I swear by God nobody read that verse to me so the Prophet
sallallahu alai asked some people in his neighborhood IMI asked some people in his neighborhood he told them did you ever recite this verse to him they thought they like no we don't remember reciting this verse so it seemed that he was telling the truth so they let him go so this is an example of those cffs of the um not knowing a specific ruling because there was no precedent in the prophet's life another example om was once asked about a man who divorced his wife two times in Jah before he became Muslim and then after
he became Muslim he divorced her a third time now in Islamic law if you divorce your wife the third time what happens she becomes permanently Haram to you unlawful to you unless she marries another man and he divorces her then you can marry her the fourth time that's Islamic law now was asked about this situation this guy divorced his wife twice but this was before Islam in Jah now that he became Muslim he divorced her does that count the first one or the third one the third time doesn't count he didn't know he did not
know that ruling because as far as he could remember when he was living with the prophet nobody asked the question like that the point is so many legal details were not directly explained to the Muslims because the prophet's stay in Medina was very short 10 years full of wars and challenges and problems how much can you explain to the people that in itself tells us the umah is not qualified to represent the prophet and explain all these details to the people besides in addition to all of that so many Fabrications happened after the prophet how
do you know even let's say the prophet did explain all of this let's say he did okay but that did not reach the new generations of Muslims they didn't hear the prophet sallallahu alaih so many things were Twisted were changed were forged so many Fabrications happened after the prophet in fact bukari says he himself the author of bukari you know he has like 5,000 or so hadiths in bukari he says I selected these 5,000 from how many no more more 600,000 hadiths 5,000 from 600,000 that means he's he's like these are the reliable hadiths in
my opinion that means what over 500,000 Hadith are not reliable how do you expect the Muslim to know what the prophet said when you have this all these Fabrications how is Allah going to protect the truth from us if he leaves it up to the umah is that possible that's not possible that's unacceptable we also see for instance Abu daud in his Sunan he says I selected my hadiths from 500,000 hadiths you have Ahmed in his mus he says I selected these correct hadiths in my opinion from 750,000 that's 3/4 of a million hadiths that
means there's so many Fabrications that happened so how do you know what the prophet even explained even if he did how is the um going to decide that for you and they have different standards who said what the the standard that bukari used who said that's the right standard Ahmed has a slightly different standard who said that's the right one so many differences of opinion here what do you do and we're talking about essential matters many of them have to do with the pillars of faith so this is a big problem that tells us the
umah is not fit to figure out this for us now here's a very important question so we know that the prophet must appoint someone to fulfill that role Allah must choose that person you can't leave it up to the umah question here can a nonprofit achieve such high status of knowledge like a prophet is that even possible let's look at the Holy Quran does the Quran give us an instance of someone who was not recognized to be a prophet to have more knowledge than a prophet yes the Quran does not mention his name but the
tell us the story of the this is inah verse 65 Allah talks about m in which he comes across someone who had knowledge Allah says we gave him knowledge M told him can you share with me some of your knowledge and you've all heard the story and then what happened when it came to certain issues that righteous servant of God who is the had more knowledge than m in those matters that means Allah can give a nonprofit knowledge that's that is similar to the status of prophethood this is not something that's incompatible with the Quran
we do have precedence in the Holy Quran you've all Al you you've all heard the story of prophet Sanam and one of his AIDS one of his successors ass who was not a prophet because he had some knowledge of the book he was able to even do Supernatural things like bringing the huge Throne of belis from Yemen to Palestine because he had some knowledge of the book so the Holy Quran gives us examples of individuals who were not prophets yet they had this type of knowledge so if we were to say the imams of have
knowledge that prophets had is that blasphemy is that problematic is that anti- Quran what's the problem in that we'll talk about the knowledge of the IM in detail in the future but this is just to tell us that we can have an IM who fulfills the role of a prophet yes there's also the wise a prophet the wise man lman yes some scholars believe he may have been a prophet but many believe he was a wise man he was not a prophet and he had Insight from Allah subhah wa ta'ala Allah would reveal to his
heart Divine knowledge and it's not proven that he was a prophet we have many many examples so the Imam then clearly can fulfill the role of the Prophet without any issues now there's one another objection over here the Holy Quran clearly inah verse three states today I have completed your faith you will find many scholars from other schools of thought citing this verse why do you need an IM religion has been complete what's the need for an IM Allah clearly states religion has been complete you don't need an IM to explain anything new everything has
been explained how do we respond to this objection very briefly we give two answers one answer is a challenge to those other schools of thought the second answer is to provide the real solution when it comes to details of Shar you will find in bukari and in many other books after this verse which was revealed other verses that explain Islamic rulings were also revealed I'll give you an example from bukari bukari says the last verse the very last verse to be revealed in the Holy Quran is what the verse of the verse of Usery or
interest that explains the laws of Usery and that it is Haram okay question if you believe in this I just I thought you just said when Allah revealed that verse Allah has completed faith everything has been explained then why does the Quran bring another verse which has to do with interest and explained it to the people what does that tell you then about today I've completed your faith this in itself is proof that when Allah said today I've completed your faith meaning the general guiding principles have been explained to people but the details no some
more details could follow you think the prophet after this verse he did nothing he just closed his door and sat down in his house that's it religion has been complete there's nothing for me to explain of course not verses would be revealed sometimes new rulings would be explained by the prophet yes we accept that the verse means that the general principles the important core beliefs core laws have been explained no doubt about that but the details no there's no contradiction here in saying religion has been complete but some details will follow that's fine sometimes you
could write a constitution for the people and you will say the Constitution is complete but can't you have amendments can't you have some details about the constitution of course you can that's not a contradiction and so this is the second answer which is the solution that Allah T does say that I've completed faith for you but Allah is not saying that every little detail has been explained to you no the main details of Islam the core beliefs the core ideas have been given to you now but as for the details tells you still need the
presence of the prophet in those days after the revelation of this verse and you also need someone who represents the prophet to explain many many details which the prophet sallallah alai Al did not have a chance to explain [Music]
