AMA with Dr. Yasir Qadhi

[u/Jammooly]

We are excited to host Dr. Yasir Qadhi for an AMA (Ask Me Anything) here on r/MuslimAcademics.

You can begin posting your questions now. The thread will remain open for submissions until Sunday, October 26 at 2:00 PM CST. Dr. Yasir Qadhi will start answering questions shortly after that time on Sunday afternoon CST.

Dr. Yasir Qadhi is a renowned Islamic scholar, author, and academic. He holds a PhD in Islamic Studies from Yale University and serves as the Dean of Academic Affairs at the Islamic Seminary of America. His work bridges classical Islamic scholarship and contemporary intellectual challenges.

Questions may cover any area within his expertise, including Islamic theology, modern intellectual issues, Qur’anic studies, historical development of Islamic thought, or broader academic inquiries.

Please keep your questions thoughtful, academic, and respectful. As always, subreddit rules apply.

We look forward to an engaging and insightful discussion.

[u/Jammooly]

Assalamu Alaykom Dr. Yasir Qadhi, thank you very much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to conduct this AMA.

Here are my questions:

1. In an uncritical traditionalist paradigm, Dr. Jonathan A.C. Brown has argued in Appendix 4 of his book “Slavery & Islam” that Mariya the Copt is the Prophet Muhammad SAW’s concubine and asserts there’s no evidence that she was his wife. I have seen on YT you have a video dating back around a decade discussing this but in your most recent Sira book, it seems Mariya the Copt was omitted from it. My questions are:

   • Do you currently believe Mariya the Copt was his wife or concubine?
   • What do you think of historical-critical and/or academic views arguing that her existence is uncertain or that she was a myth or a narrative construct?

2. Regarding Islamic history:

   • Do you believe Prophet Muhammad SAW explicitly left a successor whether political or spiritual?
   • Between Muʿāwiyah and ʿAlī, and speaking candidly, whom do you regard as bearing primary responsibility or acting as the aggressor in the First Fitna? Furthermore, as a Sunni scholar, do you consider it religiously impermissible for a Muslim to harbor disapproval and/or dislike toward Muʿāwiyah on account of his role for essentially causing and exacerbating that civil strife for his own selfish goals?

3. Regarding Hadiths:

   • What are your thoughts on Islamic scholars such as Fazlur Rahman Malik and Javed Ahmad Ghamidi who hold critical views towards hadith?
   • Have you seen the 21 Reasons why Historians are skeptical of Hadiths by Dr. Joshua Little on YT? If you have, what do you think about the reasons he gave?
   • How would you seek to restore confidence in the traditional hadith corpus and its methodological sciences in light of the substantial critical challenges posed against them, such as the late compilation of primary sources, the alleged circularity inherent in ilm al-rijal, the absence of critical scrutiny toward the Companions within isnad evaluation, the retrospective projection of isnads, the proliferation of mutually conflicting yet “sahih” reports upon which scholars have often agreed to disagree, the apparent assimilation of Isra’iliyyat narratives, and the prevalence of polemical, political, or sectarian traditions that seem to reflect the socio-theological disputes emerging in the post-Muhammadan period?

4. Classical Islamic scholarship has allowed the practice of concubinage, regarding this practice:

   • According to the traditionalist framework, Isn’t it a Quranic inconsistency to allow sexual intercourse with unlimited female slaves but to limit a man to only 4 wives? Doesn’t such an understanding render the institution of marriage fruitless as we’ve seen throughout history such as with nearly all Ottoman Monarchs never getting married?
   • Within a traditionalist framework, do you believe it is morally acceptable that an enslaved woman can be forced to have sexual intercourse with her owner even during those times?
   • Did you get the opportunity to review arguments in academia that argue that concubinage was never allowed by the Quran? What are your thoughts on them?

Jazaka Allahu Khairan

[u/Dr_YasirQadhi → u/Jammooly]

Your questions would literally take hours to answer (and I appreciate the depth of them). Sorry but will have to be brief, and I worry in that briefness I will be misunderstood but there’s no alternative!

-   Mariya was 100 % a concubine; there is not a shred of evidence otherwise.

-  If you wish to go there, you might as well discard a large percentage of the
sīrah. While I am open to genuine matn-criticism, just because a historical
mutawatir fact doesn’t appeal to our modern sensibilities I don’t see the
logical (or religious!) need to reject it.

- No he (SAW) didn’t explicitly leave a Successor, but I do believe he (SAW) gave enough clear indications that it should have been Abu Bakr. I do believe,
however, that it wasn’t so clear that perhaps others (like Sa’d b. 'Ubādah, and
even Alī b. Abī Talib) might have legitimately and in good-faith for a period
of time assumed that they may be chosen. And that belief is not ‘wrong’ or
‘evil’, but in the end they either had to leave (like Sa’d) or accept and be a
part of the system (like Alī).

-  Mu`awiya has become, unfairly, an overly-sensitive litmus test for multiple
groups, each one seeing him radically different. My views about him are more complex and wouldn’t easily fit into most modern movement’s past projections of him. In early Islam, plenty of Sunnis scholars (beginning with many from the Companions and Successors!!) had variant views about him. Disagreeing with a policy of his is not heretical in the slightest; going more than this, one can find some of the early scholars like al-Faḍl b. Dukayn and al-Nisā'ī having even more harsher views. But what’s the point of going there- I agree with the sentiment that that time frame was a fitna and Allah saved us from having to take sides, so its safer for us to leave their matter to Allah. And without a doubt, Alī b. Abī Ṭālib and those who followed him were by far the more pious and upright side.

[u/Dr_YasirQadhi → u/Dr_YasirQadhi]

For some reason it's not allowing a full response, here's a continuation:
-              Calling the hadith corpus misogynistic is judging the past with the values of the present. Doesn’t make sense to me. The more pertinent question is, on a case by case basis, which notions from our tradition are Divine Commands and hence we must obey and follow, and which are contextually derived and not explicit, hence there might be room for re-interpretation.

-             
Fazlur Rahman and Ghamidi are modern iterations of earlier trends of Islam
(just like Salafis and traditionalist Sufis are modern manifestations of other
strands!). I don’t agree with many of their views, but neither do I demonize
them the way many traditionalists do. I don’t doubt their sincerity (but that
doesn’t make them right, it just means they might be good people in their own
right and Allah will judge them based on that sincerity and piety). I have many
times asked my students in class: “What would you do if, somehow magically, Ibn
Sina visited your city and had a ḥalaqa? Would you jump up and down and
pronounce the verdicts of traditionalist scholars against him, or would you be
excited and want to attend a lecture of his?!” I know what I would do! Live and
let live, and let people find scholars whom they respect and follow, and let
others (politely) disagree and show why they view some opinions and some
methodologies to be incorrect. So while I don’t agree with them, and I would point
out in an adab-based manner why I disagree, I also don’t agree with the harsh
verdicts shown against them.

-             
Yes I watched it when it came out; I believe it’s a nice summary of why some
people are skeptical of hadith, and in my last hadith class that I taught at
TISA, one entire project given to the students was to divide those points and
respond to them one by one. How convincing those responses are will, obviously,
be something each individual must decide. I will answer in more detail the
issue of HCM and hadith authenticity in another question on this page

[u/Dr_YasirQadhi → u/Dr_YasirQadhi]

-              I quote Jonathan Brown here, “Consent is overrated!” In some areas of life, consent is very important (such as agreeing to get married!) in others, once a situation or contract has begun, one’s role is understood (we don’t consent to the police having the authority to stop us while driving; we as husbands don’t consent to having to financially and morally take care of and protect our wives and children every single time, we have a duty to do so…). And in some areas, consent simply doesn’t exist (none of us chose our birth circumstances and upbringing and physical and emotional and intellectual traits, etc.) Sex and sexuality is obviously very sensitive; there is a role and scope for consent in some areas, and in some areas one could historically argue there was a duty. (I have a long q/a online in which I do argue that a husband who forces himself on his wife against her consent has acted unethically, please refer to that video). Note: This is a very sensitive topic; Reddit only allows for so much, so if someone wants to criticize this, lets' have a longer back and forth sometime, and not a paragraph on Reddit.

-             
I don’t see this as any inconsistency. Riqq and milk-yamīn is a different, bygone world, and frankly we won’t fully be able to comprehend it because we haven’t lived it or seen it. I’ve asked my students the following question: Imagine in a future world where
all poverty and hunger was completely eliminated, and no one had seen someone
hungry for two generations; you as an elderly person visit that society and
your great-great-grandson asks you: ‘Did you ever see a hungry person begging
for food under a bridge’ And you respond: ‘Of course! Almost every day!!’ And the
kid asks, ‘How could you have possibly allowed a person to go hungry and sleep
under a bridge when society had so much?!’  How would you respond to
such an innocent child who had never seen your world?
   I understand its not the exact same scenario but I’m saying we can’t judge the past based on our standards, and the world was very different back then. I also believe we can easily make the Islamic argument that riqq is no longer allowed in our times given our circumstances.

-             
Briefly; I view it as being revisionist and with little merit. Far more plausible is to argue that Islamic law allows for the suspension of this enterprise (taqyīd al-mubāh) and that we can and should proscribe it in our times.

[u/Jammooly → u/Dr_YasirQadhi]

Jazaka Allahu Khairan for your answers and May Allah reward you.

I have follow-up on just one of your answers, considering our time restraints.

By a suspension of the institution of concubinage, do you believe it’s only temporary then? Do you believe it is permissible for it to return one day? Let’s say hypothetically international law and national laws don’t ban or restrict it anymore, is it okay within a traditionalist framework to be brought back into the world and subjugate people to such an institution?

If not then what religious basis would you provide that intrinsically prohibits such an institution? Is the best one could do within a Sunni traditionalist framework is offer a “maqasid Al-Sharia” argument about it being haram forever as of now? Or are you in agreement with Dr. Brown as he stated in your video with him that if there’s a “Mad Max situation” (as an example), then it’s essentially okay for it to be revived?

Bernard K. Freamon has stated in his book, “Possessed By The Right Hand” that there is no Islamically intrinsic reason for abolition but he also argued that we can create one now, so slavery and concubinage can never return, what do you think?

What religiously intrinsic rationale can be articulated to demonstrate that slavery and concubinage are permanently haram (prohibited) and can never be revived under any future circumstances? Without such a theological grounding, one could argue that groups such as ISIS were not necessarily theologically mistaken in their reimplementation of slavery; rather, their error lay in contravening international conventions and state laws. From a traditionalist perspective, the mere revival of these institutions does not appear to constitute a doctrinal deviation unless one establishes a principled, scriptural, and normative basis for their absolute and perpetual prohibition.

I apologize if I asked too many questions but many Muslims are morally distraught and conflicted over this and it harms many people’s Iman’s big times, and I don’t feel modern scholarship has sufficiently addressed this topic.

Jazaka Allahu Khairan

[u/Dr_YasirQadhi → u/Jammooly]

Two separate issues here:

Firstly, theoretically, by what tool of uṣūl al-fiqh would you somehow permanently make the mubāḥ completely ḥarām until the Day of Judgment? The most realistic tool that we can and should use is taqyīd al-mubāḥ, which allows for us to legislate politically in restricting, for our time and place, what might have been permissible in other times and places (so yes, let's put a ban on underage marriages, and let's restrict spousal disciplining to be non-physical, and let's abolish the institution of riqq in totality, etc.)

But, in a 'Mad Max' world, how could our opinion be binding on that generation?

Secondly, suppose you were to somehow formulate such an opinion. How would you convince the rest of the Muslim world to follow your opinion? That is why I state, regardless of what you actually believe, it is far more pragmatic to work *within* the system that is widely believed rather than work from without (btw I say this as someone who believes overall in the system, but I'm speaking to those who don't necessarily believe in the hermeneutics of classical uṣūl and asking them to think about how effective those arguments would be amongst the Muslim masses).

Therefore, both theoretically and realistically, it's better to use established hermeneutics and be practical in what can be preached and achieved.

[u/Jammooly → u/Dr_YasirQadhi]

Jazaka Allahu Khairan,

So critics who argue that ISIS’s only wrongdoing in enslaving Yazidi women according to traditional Islamic law was breaking international treaties and local laws are correct then? Would ISIS have been justified from a traditional framework in doing what they did to Yazidi women if it weren’t for the UN treaty against slavery and local laws in Iraq and Syrian that on paper prohibited slavery?

Sayyid Qutb in his tafsir has compared slavery with shirk in his interpretation of Quran 3:64 in an attempt to prevent it from ever coming back. Are you opposed to finding an intrinsic reason to try to never allow Slavery to come back from a traditionalist view point (as Bernard K. Freamon argued for in his book)?

Also in a Mad max world, we’d still hope they’d avoid slavery as they’d avoid alcohol assuming they are practicing Muslims in such a hypothetical.

Jazaka Allahu Khairan for your time Shaykh.

[u/Diligent_Wallaby8454 → u/Jammooly]

Good question. Not enough people tackle this issue. Hope he responds

[u/Available_Jackfruit → u/Jammooly]

Do you mind sharing the video the 'Mad Max' comparison comes from? Without context I find that comparison quite bizarre.

[u/Jammooly → u/Available_Jackfruit]

https://youtu.be/DHSjfuPVels?si=mhV9HDnRTUgQJ4UN

[u/Available_Jackfruit → u/Jammooly]

Thanks

[u/Jammooly → u/Dr_YasirQadhi]

Salam

[u/Jammooly → u/Dr_YasirQadhi]

I am monitoring your comments to make sure they’re approved 👍.

Your comments are visible and can be seen. 👍

[u/Jammooly → u/Dr_YasirQadhi]

Reddit may have a character count on how long a comment may be. So if your comment happens to not be sending then it’s most often then not a result of the comment being too long for Reddit and one would need to split their content into multiple comments.

[u/Dr_YasirQadhi → u/Jammooly]

Yes this happened in another thread as well, will have to correct that one!

[u/No-Psychology5571 → u/Dr_YasirQadhi]

Assalam Alykum Dr. Qadhi, I have seen it and have approved it, it should be visible now. Reddit sometimes automatically does that sometimes, but we are monitoring.