hello and i thought i'd just do a video asking the question are the salafis right about
their creed about the islamic creed now this is a very controversial area amongst
the muslims and it's only with trepidation that i dip my toe into this uh with a very good chance
that it'd be bitten off by someone so i must stress obviously i'm not a scholar and i'm just
i don't intend to give him my opinions i just me want to ask a question and share
some um historical information about this because um the salafis i've often thought in
my own mind they are the despised group within a despised group the despised group the bigger one
is the muslims and within them are the salafis and they're even more despised because i i've so many
muslims i know despise the salafis rightly or wrongly and i'm not going to get into that but i
just want to ask talk about the creed uh creed is really important uh and uh salafis claim uh that
they follow the original the authentic creed and of course other muslims say this is rubbish and uh
they don't and they are just deviants and way way off the orthodox sunni path so i just wanted to
look at the evidence about that for what it's worth um i just thought i'd start with
a definition of what a salafi is in case you were asking and i'm looking at abu khadija's
website uh he's a prominent perhaps the most prominent
salafi um intellectual and writer in the uk and he wrote a booklet called what is salafism
and in it he says to be a salafi means adhering to the creed methodology and the way of life of the
salaf as-saleh the pious predecessors the earliest of the salaf was the generation of our prophet
and his companions then after them came the virtuous three generations of believers who held
fast to the sunnah or path of the prophet and his companions the person who understands this path
correctly follows it exactly without introducing anything into it or deviating from it is a salafi
to be a salafi is not merely to imagine that one is upon the true path of the salaf
but salafism is to study the religion of the companions and follow it it was they
who understood best the meanings and intent of the speech and actions of the prophet
so uh that's the claim they make um and are they right well what was interesting
is um and this is really getting controversial now if for people to know about this this is
incendiary stuff but uh dr yes akardi um he was for many many years and he's of course the
american imam the american academic uh for many years was uh an advocate of the salafi approach
um but recently in recent years he's broken from that group and um and has written quite critically
of salafism and he's written an article a booklet really called on salafi islam which is available
online i'll link to it in the description below which i think is rather interesting he talks about
the negative aspects of salafism and the positive aspects of salafism now i'm not going to get into
the negative side and i'm not going to talk about the the positive apart from one issue and that is
uh he says something very interesting about the creed and about their theology now this is a
man as i say who is very critical of salafis now but doesn't mean he jettisons everything
of that theology of that methodology but um he says something very interesting about the creed
so uh on and i just want to read it and discuss it because um this this guy has a phd from
yale in this subject and he knows a thing or two anyway he says this um about the creed salafis
have an enviably pure theology any objective researcher will find that the athory creed
is the earliest documented sunni creed predating the kalam-based creeds of the ashuria and the
materia this is manifested in numerous theological treaties that still exist from the late second and
early third islamic centuries the athari creed was the dominant strand of sunni islam in the
fourth and fifth islamic centuries and although it came to be limited to the hambly school of the
sixth century as a result of political changes it received a reviving boost from the ever phenomenal
ibn tamir from whom it is it still continues to receive vigor so uh dr yes icardi is saying
that the salafis have the earliest creed so um the claim earlier that i mentioned in the defining the
definition of the salafi would it would be backed up by yes cardi now the two little footnotes
here which i find particularly interesting footnotes just to that paragraph i mentioned
the first one footnote 14 says and this is in response to the statement that the athari creed is
the earliest creed he says this this is the view of almost all non-muslim academics who specialize
in islamic theology from ignace godzilla to richard m frank to george mcdesi and joseph van
s now these are the titans of orientalist studies while it is true that most of these names
are dismissive of the atherecry because they view it as being overtly simplistic they acknowledge
that this trend of proto-sunism predates the calam trend of asherism some modern ashrites
despite all evidence to the contrary continue to paint an incorrect picture of this reality in
which it is alleged that ibn tamir founded a new understanding of islam in my own personal library
as i write these words says dr yasser cardi i can see around a dozen theological treaties
in my bookshelf written before al-ashari all of which affirm allah's attributes completely and
unconditionally and refute calam one may disagree with ibentemia but one cannot historically deny
that the general creed that imitamia preached predates him by at least five centuries
so this is quite significant uh if virtually all western scholars agree with the salafi
belief that their creed is the earliest creed as opposed to the ashrae creed which is the has now
become the dominant um creed in the muslim world because of people like al ghazali and others and
that's a different subject but i just want to come back to the atheree creed as it's called there's
another footnote here footnote 16 um after some comments that he made in the paragraph he read
about ibn tamir he says my doctoral dissertation at yale which was an analytical study of ibn
tamir's magnum opus entitled averting the conflict between reason and revelation or ackel and knuckle
began with an introductory chapter of around a hundred pages in which i documented the rise of
the asherite school again this is the dominant school today not not uh the original school in
it uh yasakari says i clearly demonstrate that the score began this is the asteroid school as a small
outcast movement was initially persecuted by other movements and due to historical reasons which i
delineated there in detail eventually manage to supply the dominant atheree creed the original
to become the official creed of the seljuks and later islamic dynasties the claim of
modern ashraes and they do make this claim i've certainly heard it that they have always been the
dominant understanding of sunism is historically untrue um now that's um amazing claim as well
and there's another footnote um more about ibn tamiya it's been my contention that if
allah had not blessed the athari creed with someone of the caliber of ibn tamir as his
defense lawyer and public advocate it would have long dwindled into a minuscule movement
on a personal note the towering personality and sharp insights of ibn tamir have had
a profound impact on my own thought as well and i consider him to be
one of the greatest if not the greatest intellectual mind that our ummah has ever seen
um so that's from on salafi islam by dr yasser khadi um which i said i'll link to um now he
has many criticisms of the salafi movement today um which i'm not going to go into in this video
but in terms of their key belief uh in in the athery creed uh that is not a criticism
he has and if he agrees with them that it is the historically earliest most authentic creed of the
salafs the companions of the prophet so to ask the question it seems the evidence from this um
guy who's got a phd from yale and all these western scholars as well if if this is accurate
um that the salafis are right to to say and claim that their their their creed um
and within that all that means in terms of belief about allah's attributes and the methodology and
so on is the earliest islamic creed um that doesn't mean we should all become salafis
of course because there there's more there's more to it than that but nevertheless i just wanted to
throw that out there uh with a caveat that i'm not a scholar and i could be wrong even yes icarly
could be wrong but i think um yale wouldn't have given him a phd in this if he was wrong
um he would have not done that so that's it for now make of that what you will um please
comment and disagree and offer your views again the issue is about the creed i'm not talking about
wahhabism or saudi arabia or this or i i'm just talking about the issue of the
akida issue that's the only thing i'm addressing in this video till next time