By Hussam Bteibet
Shaykh Amin Kholwadia leads the students of his Bukhārī class down the path to scholarship, helping them take the final steps necessary to become a ʿālim. Beginning their journey as rough blanks of steel, the students are shaped by their madhhab, heated by the flames of ṣarf and naḥw, forged with fiqh and uṣūl, quenched with balāghah, tempered with tafsīr and hadith, and finally sharpened with Shaykh Amin’s guidance. As he takes each student down the path, he exposes them to Darul Qasim College’s high
bar of scholarship. He helps them extract the tools they will need for the journey, and gives them what they need to continue on this path for the rest of their lives. This paper will merely expose a fragment of his instruction.
Throughout the course, Shaykh Amin outlines what it means to be a scholar. The process of learning is reflected in the command to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him: Move not your tongue with the recitation of the Quran while it is being revealed in an attempt to hasten your recitation [al-Qiyāmah 75:16]. This demonstrates al-tadrīj fi-l-ʿilm. The process of learning is to first listen, then memorize, then recite, then understand. This tadrīj can be seen in each lesson, subject, and the curriculum
as a whole. Understanding is the final step, and without it, one does not become a scholar. Deep understanding will eventually lead one to build onto his knowledge. A ʿālim must extract ʿilm from ʿilm in order to avoid the path of a nāqil. To fortify this knowledge, Shaykh Amin guides students through Mawlānā Qāsim Nanotovi’s two-part formula: First, one must understand what the waḥī meant to the initial addressees of the Quran: the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, his Companions, may Allah
be pleased with them, and the Banū Isrāʾīl. A ʿalim must be able to understand the waḥī in the initial addressee’s context. Second, a ʿalim must be able to anticipate questions and objections a non-Muslim may posit and rebut them. A ʿalim matures his understanding by taking his ʿilm through these exercises.
Each hadith and bāb in al-Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ is a door Shaykh Amin opens, exposing the student to what lies within. He taps into the student’s six pre-requisite years of study to demonstrate a methodology of reading revelation, supplementing that with further theories and philosophies to dive deeper into the waters of waḥī. The instrumental sciences play a key role in fulfilling a primary axiom of uṣūl al-fiqh and
uṣūl al-tafsīr: al-nuṣūṣ ʿalā ẓawāhirihā. The oceans of meanings that flow forth from the waters of waḥī start with the ẓāhir meanings of waḥī matluw and ghayr matluw.
Shaykh Amin expounds upon the ẓāhir meanings of waḥī with a sophisticated methodology for discerning its profound meanings and places the verse or the hadith in its precise context within the fabric of revelation. An example of this can be seen in the progressive nature of the many hadith which describe the requirements of a true believer. For example, the meaning conveyed by the hadith, “The complete believer is the one whom, from his hand and tongue, other Muslims are safe”1, is an individual
responsibility (ḍarūrah fardiyyah). Above that, the hadith, “None of you will perfect your faith until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself ”2, conveys a moral higher than the previous hadith, thus being an individual refinement (taḥsīn fardī). Implementing the excellence described in these and similar hadith, at a familial and communal level, will lead to the development of “this safe city” [al-Tīn 95:3].
This is a national responsibility (ḍarūrah dawliyyah). This demonstrates the need and benefit of structuring one’s ʿilm, so that it may be applied appropriately and effectively.
Another fundamental component of Shaykh Amin’s methodology is presenting and re-presenting the lexical and logical tools required to properly read revelation. For example, in every sentence, one must determine whether the type of relationship that exists between the musnad and musnad ilayh is ḥaqīqī or iḍāfī. To say, for example, “the daily prayers are farḍ” establishes a nisbah ḥaqīqīyah between the subject and predicate, informing the reader that each one of the daily prayers is farḍ and that there is no room for figurative interpretation. Applied to a hadith like “al-imām ḍāmin”3, the Ḥanafīs determine that the relationship is nisbah ḥaqīqīyah, thus deriving the meaning that the imam is the guarantor of the ṣalāh. Whatever the imām does applies to the muqtadī. The complete, comprehensive ḥukm for the imām is that he guarantees the ṣalāh of the muqtadī. This sets the Ḥanafī paradigm of congregational ṣalāh, such that one can see the paradigm in the particulars: not reciting behind the imām, treating the entire congregation as one unit and not as individuals praying in the same vicinity, and so on.
Another tool for reading revelation is determining whether descriptors are jāmiʿ or juzʾī. The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, mentions three attributes required to taste the sweetness of imān: that the love of Allah and His Messenger exceeds one’s love for all else, that one loves believers purely for Allah’s sake, and that one detests returning to kufr.4 Shaykh Amin compares this “sweetness”to dates or honey. When one tastes the sweetness of them, they yearn for the rest. Is the first criteria not both the entirety of the definition of imān yet also the gate to taste the sweetness of īmān itself, such that the one who embodies this characteristic has tasted īmān’s sweetness, before he even satisfies the other criteria? This would render the descriptor “sweetness” to be juzʾī, allowing for it to apply to the whole, yet allowing for it to be a sample, a prelude, to enjoying the entirety of īmān. This demonstrates another avenue of extracting meaning from revelation: to closely examine each tashbīh.
One must also determine if the concepts conveyed in revelation are kullī or juzʾī, and if they are the former, whether they are mutawāṭī or mushakkik. In the chapters of īmān, this is easily demonstrated in the difference between al-Imām Abū Ḥanīfah’s conception of īmān existing in all people identically, neither increasing nor decreasing, and al-Imām al-Shāfiʿī’s conception of īmān being directly tied to actions, such that each action can add to or subtract from the sum total of īmān within a person. Mawlānā Naʿīm simply mentioned when teaching Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim to Shaykh Amin’s class in Deoband that al-Imām Abū Ḥanīfah conceives of īmān as kullī mutawāṭī while al-Imām al-Shāfiʿī conceives of it as kullī mushakkik and left it at that since students of logic should be able to understand this presentation. This is a demonstration of the high bar of scholarship required to both teach and study Islam academically.
Tomes can be written on the concepts mentioned above. How can one do justice to countless hours of class packed with the rich content of waḥī and its interpretation? The above is merely a sliver of two fundamental aspects of Shaykh Amin’s Bukhārī class which most impacted my understanding of ʿilm and what it means to be a ʿālim.
- Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Kitāb al-Īmān, Bāb al-Muslim man Salima al-Muslimūn min Lisānih wa Yadih, 10 ↩︎
- Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Kitāb al-Īmān, Bāb min al-Īmān an Yuḥibba li-Akhīh mā Yuḥubbu li-Nafsih, 13. ↩︎
- Sunan Abī Dawūd, Kitāb al-Ṣalāh, Bāb Mā Yajibu ʿalā al-Muʾadhin min Taʿāhud al-Waqt, 517. ↩︎
- Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Kitāb al-Īmān, Bāb Ḥalāwat al-Īmān, 16. ↩︎
