Tabreez

😂😂

They're comfortable with complexity and ambiguity. They can hold two opposing ideas in their mind without immediately needing to declare one foolish/wrong . They recognise nuances, qualify their conclusions, and can explain a position they disagree with fairly. Although, to be precise, this tells me more about someone who has read thoughtfully and reflected on what they’ve read than someone who simply reads a lot.

We really need to exercise more humility in the way we approach Islamic education, particularly those of us who have been trained in Western or secular academic traditions. And I say this with the recognition that what we call Western education itself owes a considerable intellectual debt to earlier Islamic scholarship. But I digress. The way Islamic scholarship establishes, evaluates, interprets, reconciles, and rejects evidence operates within an epistemological and methodological framework that is different from those of modern secular academic disciplines. Having a BSc, MSc, or PhD equips you with certain analytical skills, but it doesn’t automatically qualify you to approach Islamic texts with the same assumptions about evidence, authority, interpretation, and truth. And I think this is where a certain intellectual arrogance creeps in. You become sufficiently competent in one intellectual tradition and begin to assume that its methods are universally transferable. You read a translation of the Qur’an, encounter an authentic hadith, and imagine that your ability to reason critically is sufficient to independently determine what the texts mean, even where generations of scholars have developed rigorous principles for precisely those questions. This doesn’t mean Islam rejects logic or critical reasoning. Far from it. The Qur’an repeatedly calls us to reflect, reason, and examine evidence. Islamic scholarship itself has sophisticated traditions of reasoning, disagreement, and critical scrutiny. But reason operates within a methodology, and the authority assigned to different forms of evidence matters enormously. Some analytical skills are transferable, certainly, but methodological competence in one discipline does not automatically confer expertise in another. The humility required is to recognise where our competence ends, learn the principles of the discipline before challenging its conclusions, and understand that unfamiliarity with a scholarly method is not evidence of its intellectual inadequacy. You can be exceptionally educated in one field and still be a complete beginner in another. There’s absolutely no shame in that. The arrogance begins when we refuse to recognise the distinction.

I have only 3 days to finish my october reads - and that's how they will become november reads 😅

Some people dear to me are being tested by Allah through a constriction in their provisions. Please spare a few moments now, or perhaps when breaking your fast, after the adhan, or during your tahajjud, to sincerely ask Allah to strengthen them through these trials, grant them the full reward of their patience, and expand their provisions beyond their expectations. As I write this, I realise that this supplication applies to far more people than those I initially had in mind. Regardless, I would be grateful if you could dedicate this du'a particularly to those who prompted this request, even without knowing who they are. And may Allah raise people better than us who will remember us in their own supplications when we need them. Jazakumullahu khayran.