[Hamza Abbasi] Brother Hassan, the feedback that we usually get is
that your points are very correct and that people accept your points to be correct.
However, the process of understanding religion, the process of studying religion
has been going on from past 1445 odd years. Alright?
Great names and great personalities have contributed in that process.
Their great works and books are also present, in many volumes, Masha Allah.
Then why in today's day and age, that is, Ghamidi Sahab onward ,
rather in the Farahi School,
is this viewpoint prevalent that given that actual religion
which was hidden in these layers of political pollution, cultural pollution,
sectarian biases, and biases of individual personalities,
that actual religion has been extracted from under them and put before people.
And that the religion of the Prophet [PBUH], that His companions practiced,
is actually this exact same religion.
So you see a common man has got no time to study all these stacks of books,
and to do rigorous research to decide what is right and what is wrong,
Why should a common man or a layman listen to you?
Which viewpoint should a common man consider as correct because
on the other side, there is an entire tradition of knowledge?
So what should a common do?
[Hassan Ilyas] See a common man need not bother about doing such an exercise.
The requirements of the religion that have been conveyed to a common man,
are the same among us as among the scholars around the whole world.
Given the largest righteous Islamic group,
which we consider as the entire Muslim populace, the consensus of the Ummah,
we do not differ from them anywhere about the positive commandments of religion.
When a common man moves ahead and
starts studying religion consciously...
Okay tell me which commands are the common need of a common man?
The common man has to pray fives times a day,
he has to believe in Allah, being born in a Muslim family as he is,
he has to believe in the Prophet, in the Day of judgment,
he has to believe in the Books of Allah that are present.
Rest, the commandments of religion in case of marriage and divorce,
in case of conditions of Salah, or in case of wudhu and Ghusl,
they are unanimous everywhere, there is no disagreement regarding them.
You have never heard that we have said that Hajj is not be performed in Mecca.
You have never heard that the number of prayers have become 6 according to us.
You have never heard that we do not accept fasting in Ramadhan.
All these are those matters in which a common man has a practical interest,
because these are the practical requirements of the religion,
which are related to every human being.
[Hamza Abbasi] And I think these are the requirements that will lead us to heaven.
[Hassan Ilyas] They will lead us to heaven.
These are the things, this is the criteria.
These are ethical matters.
No one disagrees about whether one should lie or speak the truth,
or whether one should weigh less and be dishonest.
There is no disagreement!
If a common man wants to save himself, then he should stay away from us and
regarding these matters, he should just consider what one may call
the largest righteous Islamic group of the entire Ummah,
or the collective tradition of the Ummah,
or the unanimous knowledge or inheritance of the Ummah,
whatever one may call it.
One may call it a cultural tradition of the Ummah, or the four fiqh.
So let a common man live peacefully, pray, fast, and perform Hajj,
and then after that let him depart from this world accordingly.
But when a common man moves ahead of it to study the religion consciously...
Now, what does studying consciously mean?
Studying consciously means that after one believed in the Holy Qur'an,
that it is the Book of Allah, but then one opens this book.
And when one opens it, then one reads it.
And when one reads it, then one understands it.
And one understands it, then one ponders over it.
And when one ponders,
then some disagreements do come to light from here and there,
and one's own questions also arise.
So these are those people who want to explore religion at a conscious level.
And that common man decides that if religion is the guidance from Allah,
if it actually has been instilled in his nature,
and if the relevance to the life of a Muslim
is established in it till the Day of Judgment,
then the things that Allah Almighty states should conform to the universal principles
of knowledge and reason and should be acceptable to his society and
to both his external and inner reality.
So if that is not fulfilled at some point,
then the common man lays the foundation for an analytic study,
which one calls critical analysis.
That is, one examines a given thing regarding religion, by looking at the
opinions of other people about that.
One tries to know whether the given opinion that has been described to him,
is in fact the actual opinion of the religion or not.
This is the point where the role of religious scholars begin.
This is where we also start presenting our thought to the people.
We never said to people that we discovered today that
there are 5 prayers in a day to offer.
Or things like one should believe in Allah, in His Prophets and
this is who the Prophet [PBUH] is and this is what angels are.
We never said such things.
These are those commands and prohibitions of religion that are known to all.
The point where we enter this entire stage of the world is that
when one studies religion consciously,
then there is Qur'an, which will be understood.
There is Sunnah, which will be understood.
And this most fundamental question that the religion that I consider religion,
where is that derived from? Where is that present?
Where is it found and what are the principles to understand it?
This is what the beginning of the tradition of knowledge is.
You had asked a question that people had been working on it for 1400 years,
so what was our need to come today and present a new thought about it.
But why the work had been going on?
I mean the Prophet [PBUH] left this world only after completing the religion.
Even if one excludes the case of the companions of the Prophet [PBUH]
who conveyed Prophet's opinion to other people,
but then why was Imam Malik born? Why was Imam Shafi'i born?
Why was Imam Abu Hanifa born? Why was Sufyan al-Thauri born?
Why were Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn Qayyim born?
Why was Shah waliullah born?
Why was Mufti Shafi born in our sub-continent?
And in the present era, why are the rest of scholars being born?
Why are they working and researching?
Are they saying that they will tell us about a new religion.
No, religion was present in its own place.
When one begins to understand the religion and interprets it...
The very first issue that a common man may ask,
is about the translation of a given verse recited in Salah.
So some scholar will translate that, right?
And he will learn Arabic to translate.
And the process of learning will be at a human level.
So given this entire tradition of knowledge of the Ummah,
people should understand about it that it is not creating any new religion.
Religion is already present. That is present in the sources.
Rather, we are initiating the process of understanding religion,
the initiation of the series of understanding religion.
Every person is giving an interpretation of religion,
according to his understanding and point of view.
We are not even saying that this right should be snatched after us.
No, let people move ahead and challenge our interpretation.
If they don't do this, then the journey of knowledge will not continue.
Now, what is the journey of knowledge?
I will give you an example.
See religion is before oneself, the Qur'an is before oneself,
so first of all, one discovers the reality of the commands that are present in it.
One discovers the rationale behind those commandments.
That's because the human intellect demands to know
the reality of the command that is given to him.
To know the reason behind that.
And when one does this, then one examines things with a collective wisdom.
One examines human nature.
By putting the results of one's external and iinternal apprehensions of one's senses,
and by putting the results of one's rational deduction before oneself,
does one examine the relevance to religion.
So this is a natural process.
What did we do? By "we" I don't mean us, we are just elementary students.
I mean the school of thought that you indicated,
that whatever the tradition of knowledge of the Ummah was present,
one should consider that one's inheritance
or we should say that one should consider that as one's "Sarmaaya-e-Iftikhaar".
as that everlasting, lively...
[Hamza Abbasi] Let you explain this entire thing first.
[Hassan Ilyas] Alright. Let me make it easier.
"Sarmaaya-e-iftikhaar" means that it is the reason for us to be proud,
because knowledge has not begun to be born in this day and age.
One is not inventing a wheel in this day and age.
One has the entire background of the technology before oneself,
and of the lives of people, of the discoveries of the facts.
One is establishing a foundation of some new things based on that.
By new things, I mean that by putting those facts before oneself,
one begins one's contemplation.
So we stand on the shoulders of this entire tradition of 1400 years.
We don't negate it.
We don't say that religion has been completely misunderstood to date.
[Hamza Abbasi] This is the very important point,
because this is what is usually said that you or Ghamidi Sahab ask people to put
that entire tradition of 1445 years to a side, as that is all wrong,
we will tell you the correct thing. But this is not what you say!
[Hassa lyas] See this is not the case because we wouldn't even have the ability
to translate a single verse of the Holy Qur'an today,
if it wasn't for this knowledge of the past centuries.
That is, it is this very knowledge that has preserved Qur'an,
the sciences related to it, and above all its language.
It has preserved the idiom of the Qur'an.
It has preserved the Quran's style of speech, the historical context of that.
We just start contemplating by standing with its support.
These two things should be understood quite separately.
This is what the secular benefit is.
Secular benefit in a sense that one cannot enter any new research in any science,
unless and until it doesn't have its history backing it up.
For example, if we want to work on hadiths then the most basic requirement of
understanding hadiths is to research about those who have narrated them,
to know about them.
But we don't have any source of knowledge that let us know about them.
I mean if 1300 years from now, someone has narrated a hadith in the streets of
Samarkand and Bukhara, then how can one know about that person?
So this is the knowledge of the past, the tradition of the past that is giving one
that support to start contemplating about religion.
But can this tradition, despite being so beneficial, convince one that
simply because of the strength of the tradition, simply because of the fact
that it has provided one that support, it has conveyed the sciences,
it has given birth to great scholars and geniuses,
and thousands of books were written because of it,
that now any opinion that one may form should conform them?
That, now there is no room for one to disagree with their opinions?
Now if this rule is for oneself, then why isn't it for the scholars before oneself?
If they disagreed, and it is evident that they did...
We have this common saying that there has been only one viewpoint in religion.
Where does this story come from?
There are two disagreements present in the entire Ummah.
The separate tradition of Shiites is present.
The four schools of thoughts are present in Ahl-e-Sunnah.
Their scholars have different principles to understand religion.
[Hamza Abbasi] And they differ with each other on very fundamental matters.
[Hassan Ilyas] They disagree on fundamental matters,
centuries of scholarly tradition has emerged over their differences,
when they got authority, that has been implemented in the world,
all this has been in the world.
This is not the case at all that only a single viewpoint ...
and this should not have even happened.
If it were the case, then it would be a bigger surprise!
Why? Because wherever there are humans, wherever there is a process of knowing
things rationally and intellectually, there will be disagreement as well.
There will be a difference in perspectives as well.
The great scholar of our era, namely, Mufti Shafi [may Allah have mercy on him],
his exegesis is also present here by the name of "Ma'ariful Qur'an".
He said a very beautiful thing.
He said that if somewhere people are living together in a society,
but there happens to be no disagreement between them,
then that can have only two reasons.
The first one is that all those people have parcelled their intellect
and thrown it into the river or they are all hypocrites.
That is, they are hiding their disagreements,
because living, thinking, and going through the process of contemplation,
gives birth to disagreement.
Disagreement is not about being away from each other,
rather disagreement is about knowing the correct way.
It is about exploring the way from new aspects.
So given the scholarly tradition of the Ummah...
I want to say this, to our youth as well,
who after being influenced by religion nowadays,
or by the thoughts of Ghamidi Sahab, have the strong feeling within themselves
against the academic tradition in the past, is totally wrong.
Scholars are our pride.
By putting the entire academic tradition of the Ummah before us,
we have started pondering over religion,
and after pondering over it, there are some results,
in which we disagree with them.
[Hamza Abbasi] Yes, absolutely right.