You can find the original articles here:
https://asharisassemble.com/2015/10/25/the-seven-deadly-sins-of-salafism/
I didn’t hold my breath for a reply, and indeed, despite their loud lamentations about the pressing need to save Muslims from ‘misguidance’, ‘modernism’ and ‘heresy’ (ironically, mostly spread in our time by Salafis), none was forthcoming. This is because, despite the lengthy nature of my articles, I could simply summarise them as follows: ‘Salafis know you can’t read Arabic so they just lie to you’.
So imagine my surprise when I was recently made aware by students that the individuals in question, Wakar Akbar Cheema (a student of ‘knowledge’ who runs an apologetics website and acts as a liaison between Saudi Wahhabis and Deobandis in the Subcontinent) and Bassam Zawadi (I can’t work out what he does apart from trolling people on the internet, but I am told he is a defunct ‘debater’), had not only carried on as if their bald lies and empty rhetoric had not been publicly aired, but had in fact engaged in a new campaign of internet harassment of the authors of ‘Hanafi Principles of Testing Hadith‘, the book whose sham review I had debunked.
A little more digging revealed that they were in fact pretending that they had replied to my articles when confronted:
This was literally my face when I was sent this:
Not least because:
- My name’s not ‘Aisha’, it’s N-I-K-I-T-A
- I’m not on and never have been on ‘Facebook’
- Thus he’s been cyber-stalking/chatting up some poor random girl called ‘Aisha’ (he says)
What’s even more hilarious is that his Facebook ‘response’ is included in my article above. So somehow Bassam/Cheeba has created a wormhole in the space-time continuum and refuted me before I wrote the article. And his refutation is like the word of God- it lasts forever and cannot be answered, so a word from Baseeba (I still think he and Cheeba are a unit or a hive mind from their actions) actually is an ‘response’ or an ‘answer’, even to an article that includes it. Now I’ll admit, that’s spectacularly impressive. But sadly, it’s not actually possible.
So yet again for the umpteenth time, we have to ask Cheezadi: where is the response to the article? Please can you show it to us!
Meanwhile on Earth…to disguise this embarrassment from his sadly very vulnerable followers, Chaweeba has been playing the victim all over the internet and complaining that he is hard done by my poor manners (this is a standard trick of bad mannered people themselves when they wish to avoid a discussion, they claim they don’t want respond to rudeness):
So Baseeba is actually waiting for an apology from me? Or rather some poor girl called ‘Aisha’ (could this be the start of a beautiful friendship)? It seems Baseeba considers himself a bargain basement ‘Sherlock Holmes’ for tracking me down on the internet and ‘reaching out to me’. Quite apart from the ‘free-mixing’ (as Salafis would call it) with random girls on the internet under the pretext of ‘contacting’ me, at which point did it become clear that, y’know, it’s not me? And would not a response to the article as opposed to a misguided attempt at cyber-stalking have been more constructive? Fortunately, Shukurov, who has clearly read my article, doesn’t fall for it (it’s also funny that Cheewadi is complaining of bad manners while calling a Muslims Scholar by his first name repeatedly. If someone did that to Uthaymeen they would literally have a seizure):
Here poor Chaseeba complains of being insulted:
It is always the case that people who are rude and insulting can’t in turn ‘take it’. Even sarcasm and calling these people liars becomes ‘abuse’ for them. What is funny is that in their previous article, they were referring to Sheikh Shukurov as ‘Atabek’ as well and when I pointed out that they would never refer to a Salafi scholar by his first name, i.e calling Albani ‘Nassiruddin’, Cheewaadi actually went back and edited his article to remove the embarrassment – but here he is doing it again!
When I dissected and preserved his article ‘point by point’ for all to see, Chewaadi failed to address a single point – but here he brazenly plays the victim and pretends the roles are reversed! What is really amusing is that Chaseema itself has acknowledged that it didn’t reply to the article – and I actually included this in my last article linked above. So the effort going into lying is…inadequate. I also especially love how it keeps complaining about ‘manners’ and being ‘disrespected’, while showing bad manners and disrespect:
Ahhh…he wants to respond in ‘private’ but attack in public. Strange.
I also like how he decided to contact ‘Aisha’s’ (conveniently the most common Muslim name – lots of excuses to fire off Private Messages to girls eh lads?) to ‘respond’ and ‘reach out’ without ever verifying if I was an ‘Aisha’. Or even better, forgetting about who I am and what I look like and simply responding to the points. Which Chaweema still hasn’t done. Because he can’t.
We have to be understanding of Chaseeba though, he thinks he’s been disrespected and abused but ‘reaches out to people’ by telling them he hasn’t bothered to read their emails and to ‘shoo’ like animals:
(Everything is good manners and ‘civil’ in Salafi land as long as you add ‘Salam’ it seems).
Thus he likes to pretend to his fans (if anyone is deserving of simple human pity, then surely it is they) that he will respond to his publicly academically diarrhoeal statements in private emails. But then when he is contacted, he doesn’t bother to read it. And once again wants to discuss it with someone who is not me – this time a boy! Maybe he has some kind of disability which makes him able to spew forth copious amounts of spam, but when he is confronted by actual references or information, he can no longer ‘spew’. Except to random girls on ‘Facebook’ or other guys. I think the name of this disability is called ‘not wanting to draw attention to ones inadequacies’. We all have a bit of it!
He also thinks this is good manners:
(It seems his ‘response’ to this is that it was obtained ‘illegally’ – we can expect that Chaweeba’s grasp of internet law is as good as his understanding of Sharia law – so feel free to sue me or site admin!). Hilariously he ‘apologised’ after eight months only after he was trolled on Shukurov’s ‘Facebook’ about his crypto-racism (sadly, many Saudis have xenophobic ideas nowadays) when himself complaining about ‘bad manners’. I’ve included the hilarious ‘Facebook’ thread link below.
You have to forgive me for the long preamble, but until we understand Cheeba@Zawadi’s mentality, strange definition of manners and language, as well as poor skill at lying (lying is bad, but if done well requires considerable skill and intelligence), we won’t be able to do justice to their latest ramblings.
So we can see that Cheeseeba simply cannot abide bad manners or poor English. Unless they come from him. Speaking of English, it seems that Wazeeba has a very strange dialect of it:
We can see that those offended by poor English have a very strange idiom themselves…
Thus, saying that Ibn Hajar is ‘not necessarily a heretic’ is not calling him a heretic according to the Cheezaadi dialect of English. One dreads to think of how Baseeba would defend himself in court:
‘Are you a supporter of ISIS Mr Zawadi?’
‘Not necessarily!’
Are you and Mr Cheeba lovers?
‘Not necesarily!’
We see that Mr Zaweeba has a very strange way of employing the English language – where a simple ‘no’ will suffice he substitutes ‘not necessarily’ (which means ‘I’m not answering the question on the grounds that it may incriminate me’). When they are accused of impugning the great scholars of the past as heretics, Chaweeba respond by saying ‘not necessarily’ (*but they are offended at other peoples English being ‘bad’). Thus, Baseeba will have no problem if I assert that they are ‘not necessarily’ Sunnis, because in their language that is an affirmation of their Sunnism.
This illustrates a very typical Salafi game: simply never state your position, ‘kufaar‘ politician style: they are especially keen to keep any discussion away from their embarrassing positions and ‘policies’, again just like a politician. I mean, he could just say: ‘I don’t think Ibn Hajar is a heretic’or ‘Asharis are not heretics’. That would clear things up nicely. Instead he is telling you that he didn’t necessarily blah or didn’t call him blah. Salafis are excellent at never stating their position about anything or demanding that you bring the proof of their position, conversely, they love telling everyone else what Sufis, Sunnis or Shia ‘believe’. We often find this kind of inversion amongst those with a fascist mindset that nonetheless wish to conceal it out of expediency (sorry, I should have said ‘Salafis don’t necessarily have a fascist mindset’ or ‘I’ve never called a Salafi a fascist’).
Salafis also have a bizarre idiom when it comes to things like ‘killing’ ‘takfir‘ or ‘anthropomorphism’, as we shall see shortly. Take for example, Basseema’s bizarre stance on anthropomorphism, which is like that of all Salafis, they will tell you till they are blue in the face that they are not ‘anthropomorphists’ – but when you finally (or rather if you finally) get their definition of ‘anthropomorphists’ out of them, they mean that they don’t say God is ‘human’ or has a body ‘like humans’ or ‘like creatures’. But to the rest of the Sunnia and Shia (and even Mu’tazzila) world, ‘anthropomorphist’ means anyone who asserts that God has a body of any kind – it being ‘unique’ is of no consequence, any more than Adam was unique and thus ‘Godlike’ when he was the only one of his kind.
Chaseeba is also easily offended by sarcasm and ad hominem. We saw just how ‘assiduously’ he avoids these himself above but take this bizarre refutation of myself sent to me by the same student:
Whaaaaaaaat???!?!
It is not allowed for scholars or teachers to be called ‘Nikita’ now?! That excludes literally much of Russia, Latvia, Ukraine and God knows where else…what’s really funny is that while whining about being attacked ‘personally’, he attacks someone’s knowledge based on their (real) name!
If you have time, you can witness most of the exchange this nonsense seems to have come from here: I don’t go on ‘Wastebook’ precisely because of the kinds of idiots infecting it:https://www.facebook.com/atabek.shukurov/posts/1069717896404619?comment_id=1070808212962254&reply_comment_id=1074307105945698
It’s also very illustrative for readers to see a extreme salafist (‘Madkhalis’ as they are called amongst Salafis themselves) such as Chessama complain about ‘sectarians’. This is standard operating procedure for Salafis when they want to either infiltrate Sunnis or to garner sympathy. The most glaring thing in this case is that Bassam, a Saudi citizen and employee of its government seems to have resolutely failed to ever advise his own employer/government on its ‘sectarianism’, unless he thinks that having Wahhabism as an official state ideology lends itself to teaching a diverse set of Islamic theologies in schools of mosques? Perhaps he is trying to persuade Saudi to fund Sufi groups as well as Salafist ones to avoid ‘vile sectarianism’ as he calls it? (as the saviour of manners and the English language, Cheewaadi has forgotten what it means to call someone ‘vile’ in his beloved ‘English’). We hold our breath for this, but in the meantime, it is hilarious that taking Ibn Taymiyya to task for being a genocidal maniac and insisting people are killed for trivial infarctions such as saying intention to pray out loud or passing wind (yes!) should be killed is ‘sectarian’.
This Dear Reader is how Salafis are and will be destroying Islam, in both the West and East: they put the reputation and sanctity of their scholars and opinions above the faith and reputation of Muslims, and if anyone tries to absolve Islam from the extremism of Salafis fatwas and scholars, they cry ‘unity’ and ‘sectarianism’ (they don’t believe in the former and have blind faith in the latter), thereby emotionally blackmailing lay Muslims into prostituting their public image to defend the idiosyncrasies of Salafism by claiming that ‘the kufaar hate us’.
We can see this dreadfully suicidal tendency in Basseema itself: along with the wildly inaccurate comments I deal with here, I found a whole bunch of ‘papers’ (I don’t think anyone explained to him about academic papers either…) where he attempts to defend Salafism…by taking out the rest of Islam too. So when he is thrashed about Salafi’s icon Ibn Taymiyya being so violent that he wants to kill people for breaking wind in prayer (yes, it’s real, I almost broke wind when I found out!), he goes into a violent rage and starts attacking any and all targets, and ‘refutes’ ‘Modernist Hanafis’ (aka ‘Sunnis’) by showing that Hanafis allow people to be imprisoned for publicly refusing to pray:
I love how detailed this is! And is there really a need to put ‘by’ when you haven’t included anything other than a (poor) translation?
Obviously, killing and imprisonment is identical in Salafi’s eyes and so Hanafis or other Sunnis imprisoning people for not praying is the same as killing someone for farting. Okay…
Baseema is similarly incandescent with rage and unable to think straight when his favourite Ibn Taymiyya is accused, absolutely correctly as Cheewaadi admits, of believing in the ‘Satanic Verses‘ incident (where the Prophet is alleged to have committed Shirk (polytheism) – Allah forbid!) and demanding that this be the main position of Muslims, Baseewaadi ‘refutes’ this by claiming, utterly without any semblance of shame, that any scholar who didn’t say that he doesn’t believe it…must in fact believe it.
We already saw how he errr…’employs’ the English language where ‘not necessarily’ means ‘I didn’t’ and ‘I haven’t’ means ‘I refuse to state my position on the grounds that it may make me look bad in front of the Sunnis I am trying to groom on the internet’, so I guess we should not be too surprised at this logic of any time you don’t deny that you are say, a rapist or any time you don’t claim that the Prophet committed Polytheism, you in fact accept it.
However, surely even someone as lost in space as Zaweeba must see the folly of telling Muslims and non-Muslims alike about all of the people who he (falsely) claims believed in the ‘Satanic Verses‘ incident to defend his favourite scholar Ibn Taymiyya as opposed to simply admitting that Ibn Taymiyya was (once again) horribly wrong (something he never does in the article – or anywhere else we can find). This is all the worse as Cheesaama’s hated target Shukurov already did a talk on ‘The Satanic Verses‘ several years ago (Chewaadi is too busy trolling him to actually look at his material) where he explains the other scholars who narrated it and whether ‘narration’ is ‘acceptance’ in Islamic scholarship – much more on that below though. Fortunately, Islamophobes have evidential standards it seems that are at least in excess of what Baseema considers licit, so his articles would hopefully not be of much benefit to them. You can amuse/depress yourself by reading the rest of his cyber – stalking’ of ‘modernist Hanafis’ (he means Shukurov, whose name he cannot bring himself to write any longer presumably) in his other ‘papers’ (I think he doesn’t realise that a ‘paper’ can be longer than, y’ know, one page or sheet. But we know Salafis like to take things literally). It is most frightening that Salafis actually consider a page or two of such bile to be deserving of being uploaded onto a site for academic papers and drafts, but then again, we have searched in vain for Basseba’s academic credentials previously.
Other hilarious examples of ‘Baseemish’ logic include the assertion that giving a fatwa that you don’t require the face and hands of a woman to be covered is the same as accepting that you in fact do endorse it and that any difference of opinion means all of the opinions are accepted, along with other hilarious abuses of the English language and general common sense found here:https://www.academia.edu/25185055/Do_Hanafis_Reject_the_Face_Veil_Niqab_(I must say, the profusion of short and hilarious ‘papers’ here gave me an afternoon’s pleasure – please enjoy!).
I personally never understood this site admins profuse use of Shukurov’s work until I saw the kind of opposition and bile he seems to illicit from others. Then I immediately thought ‘could it be that these Hanafis are on to something?’ Although I did not perhaps appreciate Shukurov’s comments about Qadi Iyad and some other Maliki scholars, it made me take the Hanafis seriously for the first time outside of their books. Until then, the main ‘Hanafis’ who I came across were Deobandi and Brelwi sectarians, who as far as my knowledge goes, are very hard to tell apart from Salafis (despite their loud protestations). Indeed, Shukurov has been subjected to a veritable campaign of internet terror by Salafis and their familiars as well as anyone else- here is the kind of comment that keeps me away from Facebook:
And this was from some of the ‘Sufi scholars’. What makes this very sad is that Shukurov gets exactly what I got above: people make extravagant claims, and when you refute these they merely run away and start a new front elsewhere. When I took the time to demonstrate and demolish the multifarious errors in the sham review by Zaweeba, they merely ran away and some eight months later re-emerge and claim that they already replied, blah blah blah, bad manners, why reply to someone called Nikita, yadda yadda yadda.
They also have a hilarious propensity, which you would have observed in my last two articles, of attacking and crying ‘heretic!’ in public, but when you dismember their arguments, they then want to have a ‘private’ dialogue. But sadly for Chaweeba, the way of the world is public chastisements for public indiscretions.
This would merely be pathetic and kind of funny if these individuals did not have such a high tolerance for embarrassment, because they invariably open a new front and keep posting nonsense as if the previous buttock clenchingly shameful take-downs had never happened. So it would seem that in the past few years, Atabek Shukurov’s ordeal makes mine pale into insignificance, for despite now opening a new front, it appears CheebaZawadi/Legion and their followers have:
-Claimed that Shukurov lied on the issue of the age of Aisha – when he debunked their claims he received…no response.
-Claimed that Shukurov was wrong about the ‘Waseeya of Abu Hanifa’ (a foundational text in creed studied by everyone except Salafis) being authentic. When he made a lengthy video describing the authentic chain he received…no response.
-When they published a fake review of Shukurov’s book, it appears Shukurov wisely ignored them…but muggins was left with, you guessed it, no response.
You know, I must admit to a begrudging respect for Cheewaadi and his ilk: anyone, who even after a beating like that, can carry on undeterred really deserves respect. One often finds though that the reason for this is merely a hollow life: most of the worst internet trolls are Salafist Muslims and ISIS does much of its recruiting online. One even struggles to find such committed trolls amongst Islamophobes or militant atheists. I think the reason for this is that even those vile groups such as militant atheists and Islamophobes have limited time to spend online, their hate is bounded by their hobbies. I guess they can’t be on the internet trolling Muslims all day because they have to read comics or watch movies or listen to death metal or whatever they do. For Salafis however, virtually all hobbies are haraam or ‘bad’ or time wasting or whatever. This leaves them with only one outlet for their frustrations and egos – The Internet.
Now the scourges of logic and factual accuracy are back again, undaunted, claiming that Shukurov and Co. are heretics, modernists and other things ending in ‘-ists‘ as well as possibly cannibals and The Boogeyman.
We should also, before beginning this latest and lengthy debunking, which you can rest assured will go similarly unanswered, mention the likely reasons Chaweeba will furnish for not replying this time. These may include but not be limited to:
- I have black hair. No one with black hair is worth replying to
- I included pictures in my article
- It’s too long, they can’t be bothered (*but they can be botherwed setting up whole websites trolling Shukurov)
- It was already replied to…’Back to the Future’ style
- Bad manners is only what other people do, so they don’t need to reply
- They chatted up some random girls on Facebook and asked for their private emails, so that’s the same as an academic reply
- My name contains ‘Suede’ and most suede is made from pigskin, therefore, they are not replying
I’m sure Cheseeba will not disappoint me and will come up with even more drug induced reasons than they did last time or the ones I can come up with.
Also, at the outset of the article, I would like to add ‘not necessarily’ to everything I say, which by Baseeba’s logic means I can just deny any mistakes I make no matter how egregious, up to an including takfir or anathematisation of senior scholars (Salafis always say that ‘ordinary’ people have an ‘excuse’ if they are heretics so are not killed – but is Ibn Hajar an ‘ordinary’ person who doesn’t know the Salafi’s proofs and will still be excused for being a heretic? Let me guess: ‘not necessarily’, right!?).
Okay, I know, you’re thinking ‘get on with it you waffling mare’.
The subject of Cheezadi’s latest ‘trigger warning’ against Shukurov (who they can’t bear to mention by name any longer since it presumably cause them to have a seizure) is the issue of hadith and narrators rejected by Hanafis but accepted by ‘sunnis’ (and by this they mean Salafis, who are by no stretch of the imagination or lubrication with petro-dollars ‘Sunni’) – specifically those narrated by the Tabi (generation coming after the companions of the Prophet) Ikrima – the slave of the companion of the Prophet Ibn Abbas (RA).
Basically, there is a huge disagreement about Ikrima: many of the earlier scholars rejected him for being a violent Kharijite (the early sect of Islam that declared everyone who disagreed with them, including the sahabah, to be disbelievers) amongst other things. However, he was included as ‘reliable’ or ‘righteous’ by some later scholars including Bukhari. He also narrated some hadiths which are most expedient for Salafis, such as one about killing or rather burning apostates, and we all know that Salafis have a serious Freudian obsession with the issue of killing apostates (presumably because Salafis cause so many people to apostate so thus maybe they think killing them is ‘cleaning’ up their mess). Ikrima is also very important to them since single chain narrations provide many of the bizarre creedal and juristic positions of the various Salafi groups with support. So it is very important for them that no hadith be rejected by anyone (other than them) and that they exersize a monopoly over which hadith are accepted or authentic, which narrators are authentic and thus who is and is not a ‘modernist’ (it’s them in case you are wondering).
Most sensible proponents of Islam (so, not Salafis), avoid the issue of Ikrima, because it arms and is used by both Shia and non-Muslim antagonists of Islam. No such caution about airing potentially damaging things can be expected from Salafis though, who believe that if you ‘challenge’ people’s faith with difficult to believe things and morally difficult problems, you will see who the ‘real’ Muslims are. Basically, they are willing to make Islam look bad because they think that if you are worried about looking bad in front of the ‘kufaar‘ or Shia (these two groups are largely identical for Wahhabis), then you must have ‘weak faith’. Therefore they are constantly embarrassing Islam by proferring bizarre and laughable ‘arguments’ for all of the things Muslims are embarrassed about, nearly always rightly, since they are not part of Islam. So you will hear them defend the killing of apostates, stoning of adulterers and marrying nine year old’s as if their life depended on it, and getting kudos for not backing down in front of ‘modernists’. The fact that these positions may not be the correct ones in the first place would never occur to a puritan. The result is that Salafis get bragging rights, their opponents are labelled and anathematised and non-Muslims and reasonable Muslims are left appalled.
Therefore let’s examine the issue of Ikrima, since Baseeba has insisted on airing the dirty laundry others have put into Islam’s basket in public. Before we being, remember the NEW and REVISED ‘Seven Deadly Sins of Salafism’. We will be labelling each of their arguments with the relevant sin as we go – it’s like a Treasure Hunt!
1- Mis-translate these everything at will – Allah will reward you, it’s for a good cause!
2- Decry anyone who disagrees as a modernist, heretic or better still a Mu’tazzilite or Shi’ite – but never under any circumstances admit your Wahhabi affiliation. Say you are just representing ‘Islam’
3- Use Ahad hadith (single chain narrations) to persuade people that this is what the Prophet said (most of ISIS’ ‘fatwas’ from raping Yazidis to killing and burning random people are extracted from ahad hadith)
4- In case anyone questions your use of hadith, start tampering with chains and narrators, declaring them ‘weak’ and ‘unknown’
5- Use modern ‘scholars’, specifically Albani and Co. to reject any hadith when it doesn’t suit you
6- Pretend things are Muttawatir (mass transmitted like the Quran) and Ijma (agreed upon) when they are not – if challenged give evidence without translating or mistranslate. If cornered, use Salafi sources (Ibn Taymiyya etc) to ‘prove’
7- Lie, its for a good cause! And pray to God (this direction: UP) that they can’t read Arabic.
As the more savvy of you commented on the last debunking/skewering of Bassweeba, this could simply be simplified to ‘the other side can’t speak or read Arabic, so just make stuff up’, and you were right. To this we can add that few people have the time to check up the sources. What was really funny was we saw last time that Basseba doesn’t seem to be unable to read Arabic properly either. So I think that’s called ‘irony’.
I have included ‘screen captures’ of the articles by Cheewadi, since last time the articles were ‘redacted’ and changed after I addressed them. Since things have a habit of disappearing from the internet, I have included the originals – how nice of me to save you having to click a link too!
In his new attempt at hiding the truth, Basseema is trying to convince everyone that Ikrima ‘the liar’ is one of the ‘beloved’ and great ‘teachers’ of Abu Hanifa. Note how he puts this article under the section ‘refuting heresies‘. Here we see the vile modernism and disrespect of Salafis for Muslim scholars at its most potent – according to this non entity Zaweeba, all of the scholars of the past who rejected Ikrima the slave of Ibn Abbas, often in the most flagrant terms – scholars of the rank of Imam Malik and too many other Sunni authorities to mention (*but I will below) are all heretics.
Notice the other bizarre list of ‘heresies’ that are ‘answered’ on this page. However, it is sufficient here to know that according to Bassema, thinking that Abu Hanifa rejects Ikrima is a ‘heresy’ and needs refuting in public. So one assumes that Malik, Shafi and Ibn Sireen (amongst numerous others) calling Ikrima a liar must be kufr or disbelief for Chaweeba.
http://icraa.org/abu-hanifas-opinion-of-ikrimah/
Cheewaadi wants to prove Abu Hanifa’s ‘love’ of Ikrima, a member of the Khawarij, a sect that believes that Ali (RA) and most of the other companions of the Prophet are kaafirs or disbelievers – which is why people avoid talking about Ikrima and leave it alone, but of course, Baseeba, who cares not for the faith of Muslims nor the image of Islam, has to ‘go there’. In fact by forcing Abu Hanifa to accept Ikrmia as a reliable narrator they are opening a can of worms, because the next logical question in the minds of most will be ‘hang on, if guys who declare Sahabah of the level of Ali, Umar etc to be kaafir are reliable then who isn’t reliable!? And what is the difference between us and Shias‘?!) Cheezadi has written two articles in fact. If you can’t be bothered to read his article (and I advise that you do inflict it on yourself as a learning exercise), Baseeba brought four proofs; but Hanafis (*as opposed to Salafis like Chesaama) have already debunked this astonishingly banal effort:
https://shaykhatabekshukurov.com/2016/06/13/ikrima-as-imam-of-modern-hanafis/
Well, I don’t think we need to look into the issue more. But I’ll do it anyway. Because these people are an embarrassment not only to Islam but to truth and religion in toto. Of course they will be offended with their gentle sensibilities at being called liars, but what else can we call it? ‘Fantastical religious thought’? ‘Imaginative theology’?
Remember Dear Readers, learn this once and save yourself a lifetimes trolling by salafis: they always try to fool you by claiming that since a scholar is narrating from someone, this means he considers him ‘reliable’ of this is an endorsement of that narrators beliefs or narrations. To Western Educated people, this is as obviously false as some adducing a quote from Hitler to prove a point being then accused of being a Nazi. But of course, most Salafis care not for academia as we have seen.
”Al-Qawaid fee uloom al-hadeeth” page 220” .
Abu Hanifa narrating from someone doesn’t prove that he is reliable…according to Abu Hanifa himself. We will examine why they would narrate from unreliable people below. For now let us note that they had a very modern and recognisable academic technique – collect sources even from deviants and antagonists.
4- In case anyone questions your use of hadith, start tampering with chains and narrators, declaring them ‘weak’ and ‘unknown’
5- Use modern ‘scholars’, specifically Albani and Co. to reject or accept any hadith or narration you like
| Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan | 685–705 |
| al-Walid I ibn Abd al-Malik | 705–715 |
| Sulayman ibn Abd al-Malik | 715–717 |
| Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz | 717–720 |
| Yazid II ibn Abd al-Malik |
720–724
|
Here are the beliefs of Ibadis. First; they believe about Uthman what many Shia believe about Abu Bakr and Umar second (i.e that they are kaafir). Also that the ”confused” person in the following verse is Ali and the companions who are calling him to the guidance are Kharijites from the battle of Nahrawan (a battle between Ali and the Khawarij, where they were soundly thrashed)
They also say that the person whose words please you in the verse 2;204, is Ali;
‘And of the people is he whose speech pleases you in worldly life, and he calls Allah to witness as to what is in his heart, yet he is the fiercest of opponents’.
Thirdly; the one who sells himself to please God is Abdurahman bin Muljim (the Kharijite who killed Ali).
2;207 And of the people is he who sells himself, seeking means to the approval of Allah. And Allah is kind to [His] servants.
[astute readers will notice that the Kharijites Quranic ‘exegesis’ is self contradictory and idiotic: the Quran in one place ‘condemns’ Ali and then asks them to nonetheless guide him – perhaps this conflict this would be ‘solved’ by the Khawarij by using ‘abrogation’ like their Salafi descendants today. It also conflicts with their theology which says that Ali is destined for Hell – so why kill people and fight battles to ‘guide’ him?]
I’m sorry, but this is simply unacceptable. Pretending that someone with such astonishing beliefs was universally accepted or that rejecting him is ‘heresy’ is utterly ridiculous. All we can say is that such individuals were included for historical purposes in collections like ‘Sahih Bukhari‘ – not that they are ‘Imams’ or ‘pious’ or ‘reliable’.
Salafis, when cornered sometimes make the astonishingly stupid argument that Khawarij are considered reliable, despite their violence and hatred towards Sahabah because they consider lying to be disbelief (which is true, just as all ‘major’ sins are disbelief for them). I think most readers, including the village idiot, will probably feel their intelligence insulted by this argument, not least because it goes against what Salafis and Deobandis as well as Brelwis have been claiming for years, that all the narrators are ‘thiqa‘ (righteous). Well, you can’t condemn Ali and Uthman to Hell and be a genocidal maniac and be ‘righteous’ (*unless Salafis do think that?!). In fact, if you can be a major sinner and a heretic and still narrate as long as you don’t lie, Salafis will have to show that they are being egalitarian and accepting hadith from all the different sects that say lying is disbelief (foremost amongst them, the Mu’Tazzila) and are defending them the way they defend the Khawarij.
Basweema has seen the conundrum and tired to claim that ‘Hanafis’ (notice how he is trying to avoid saying his own position) accept narrations from the deviant groups (they do). But previously, he was trying to tell us that Ikrima was indispensable and accepted by Abu Hanifa. He also tried to blackmail you by saying, well, if you reject Ikrima, you will have to reject many other narrators too.
So?
We should just overlook the heresies of such people? Or do we adopt a careful approach and look at the hadith with a systematic creedal and juristic eye like the Malikis and Hanafis instead of willy nilly like Salafis?
Salafis and Deobanadis have two choices: they either admit that many hadith are narrated by people such as Ikrima, guilty of heinous crimes and most certainly not ‘Imams’ or righteous, and are so to be tested by hadith principles (such as those of Imam Malik) or they have to do their usual game of ‘gotta accept them all’ vis a vis ahad (single chain) narrations and admit that they blindly accept narrations about God, the Prophet and killing people from open sinners and deviant sects.
You can’t have your cake and eat it. Or, perhaps in terms Bassaama will understand, you can’t have your slave girl and sell her, as they say in ISIS (And yes, it is always a girl).
Now we know why modern Muslims are defending Ikrima so vociferously, perhaps because modern Salafi Islam is is very often an extreme sect of Hanbalism where the main ”Sheikh ul-Islam” is Ibn Taimia who also insulted Ali and his wife Fatima as much as he could (considering that he was a coward).
We also now see that certain groups of muhaddiths support Nasibis and Kharijites in a sometimes partisan way, so we have to bear this in mind.
أَبُو إِسْحَاق إِبْرَاهِيم بن أَحْمد التّنوخي البعلي الْمَعْرُوف
أَبُو الْعَبَّاس الصَّالِحِي الحَجَّار الْمَعْرُوف بِابْن الشِّحْنَة
أَبُو عبد الله الْحُسَيْن بن الْمُبَارك الزَّبيدِيّ
أَبُو الْوَقْت عبد الأول بن عِيسَى بن شُعَيْب السِّجْزِي
أَبُو الْحسن عبد الرَّحْمَن بن المظفر الداودي البوشنجيّ
عبد الله بن أَحْمد بن حمُّوية الْحَمُّوِيّ السَّرخسيّ
أبو عبد الله مُحَمَّد بن يُوسُف الْفِربرِيّ،
Asharis: Assemble 
“but when you finally (or rather if you finally) get their definition of ‘anthropomorphists’ out of them, they mean that they don’t say God is ‘human’ or has a body ‘like humans’ or ‘like creatures’. But to the rest of the Sunnia and Shia (and even Mu’tazzila) world, ‘anthropomorphist’ means anyone who asserts that God has a body of any kind”
If so, the Salafi definition is closer to the etymological meaning of the word, since “anthropomorphic” literally means “which has human form”. All English-speaking non-Muslims and English dictionaries I know would also understand “anthropomorphic” in this sense. So this is yet another unfortunate source of misunderstandings, which could have been avoided if Muslims today had stuck to the original Arabic term instead of resorting to approximative translations, which almost always create more confusion. Traduttore, traditore.
I would agree that the Salafist idea of God is not “anthropomorphic” in this sense, it is rather “robot”-morphic. Salafis feel compelled to speak about God’s “body” but not about his “personality” the way the Trinitarian doctrine does for example. Ibn Taymiyyah’s idea of God swinging on ropes is much more reminiscent of some materialist philosophers’ idea of a mechanical God, periodically maintaining his created world according to immutable mechanical laws, than of any Christian doctrine of Incarnation.
The passage you quoted made me think the same thing, actually. The most accurate, more comprehensive translation of the Arabic term (مجسم/تجسيم) “tajseem/mujassim,” in my amateur opinion, would be “corporealism/corporealist.” The much beloved Salafi caveat “not like ours” does go some way towards negating the “anthro-” bit of anthropomorphism.
Kufr either way, of course…
I haven’t laughed so hard at such a wonderful article on that lanati Baseball, sorry I mean the entity that has morphed into Baseeba.
Keep it up guys.
Now this is what I call a
R-E-F-U-T-A-T-I-ON
Bravo to the people who wrote this article. Its nice to see some sane, intellectual people who are sincere in their approach in rescuing Islam from the Salafis and their ilk
A really illuminating piece. I’m pretty sure the likes of Zawabi and Cheeba are active on reddit. My own small, innocuous piece was trolled incredibly hard the other day by folks of a decidedly similar bent. In fact, they even linked to that egregious ‘review’ of Shukurov’s book on hadith: https://www.reddit.com/r/islam/comments/4o30yf/but_wait_theres_more_examining_apostasy_in_the/
Also, is it possible to make the screen grabs links? The script is rather small and blurs when I try to expand them.
brother zawadis reply:
Bassam Zawadi
Bassam Zawadi Wow…… the utter desperation of modernist “Hanafis” to defend their stance on Ikrimah – the slave of Ibn Abbas. And the fact that Ramadan hasn’t shamed them to stop at their personal insults and slander and mockery is even sadder! Here’s the sad article https://asharisassemble.com/…/muslims-proudly-display-acad…/
They keep condemning Ikrimah for being a kharijite, while even according to their own book “Hanafi Principles of Testing Hadith”, on page 198 they recognize that there is a disagreement regarding Kharijites. That is because the Kharijites are known to have believed that lying is kufr and hence it’s expected that they wouldn’t have lied. The dominant position of the Hanafi school is that Ahlul Bid’ah who weren’t known liars could be accepted (see Abdulmajeed al-Turkmani, Diraasaat fi-Usool al-Hadeeth ‘ala Manhaj al-Hanafiyyah, (Maktabat as-“Sa’aada, Karachi, 1st edition, 2009), pp. 163-173
So why are they blasting a view they are forced to recognize as at least “valid”?
They say that Abu Hanifah narrating from Ikrimah is not proof that he viewed Ikrimah to be reliable. What these people fail to address is the fact that Abu Hanifah did not only merely narrate from Ikrimah, but rather BELIEVED in a hadeeth he narrated from Ikrimah and USED THAT hadeeth to propagate his views. Please refer here https://www.academia.edu/…/Imam_Abu_Hanifah_d._148_A.H…, page 3, footnote no.2.
A remark was made about Kitab al-Wasiyyah, but even Orientalists with no Salafi axe to grind adopted the “Salafi position” regarding that book http://www.ahlalhdeeth.com/vbe/showthread.php?t=18106 and so you don’t have to be “Salafi” to see the obvious.
It’s simply UNBELIEVABLE just how shallow the author’s response is to the points made by Salih bin Ali al-Umayrini, which I paraphrased over here https://www.academia.edu/…/The_Hanafi_Stance_Regarding…
I challenge every single honest and sincere person to refer to that article and then see the author’s response to it and say whether the author made any serious attempt at all to interact with the arguments (instead of resorting to ad hominem and committing the genetic fallacy). I challenge the reader to literally check every rebuttal in the article I linked to with the points of the author and you would notice that the author is far from offering a comprehensive rebuttal to all the points.
But do you want to know what the saddest part of all this really is? Do you really want to know? The saddest part is that they are trying so hard to discredit Ikrimah because they think that way they could discredit the hadd ruling on the apostate as a result. But there are two huge problems which would upset this attempt.
Problem no. 1……. IKRIMAH ISN’T THE ONLY NARRATOR who narrated the hadith of the hadd on apostates http://icraa.org/is-ikrimah-alone-in-narrating-the-hadith-…/
Problem no. 2……..Abu Hanifah and all the major Hanafi jurists accepted the hadd ruling of the apostate!!!! https://www.academia.edu/…/The_Hanafi_Stance_Regarding…
So what does this all mean? Does this mean that Abu Hanifah and the Hanafi paragons, including Imam al-Maturidi himself are a bunch of Salafis??? Imam al-Maturidi himself in his Kitab at-Tawheed (which ironically the modernist “Hanafis” want to translate into English and are begging for people to help them fund the project) accepted the hadith of Ikrimah…
وقال رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم من بدل دينه فاقتلوه ثم بين الله دينه فقال فمن يكفر بالطاغوت ويؤمن بالله
Soo….. al-Maturidi must have been a “kharijite loving bloodthirsty Salafi” then, huh? Hey modernist “Hanafis”…… I seriously hope you are not planning to commit academic fraud and not translate that bit!
Sooo……. What does all this mean? This all means that Abu Hanifah, his major students, al-Maturidi and all the major Hanafi paragons who followed later did not give two hoots about these arguments the modernist “Hanafis” are launching against Ikrimah. If that is not enough reason to reject the claims of these modernists, then I don’t know what is to be honest.
It’s quite sad how they ignore the fact that the vast majority of the scholars accepted Ikrimah as reliable, that they have to appeal to weak isnads to justify their claim that Ikrimiah wasn’t unreliable and how they ignore the fact that the dominant position in the Hanafi madhab is that Kharijism isn’t a valid reason to reject the credibility of a narrator. But the real icing on the cake remains the FACT that Abu Hanifah and the rest of the Hanafis didn’t mind USING (not only narrating) and BELIEVING in ahaadeeth narrated by Ikrimah.
It’s amazing how these modernists would appeal to unreliable isnad supported narrations to bash Ikrimah, but suddenly care about critically examining isnads when it’s not in their favor. Talk about lack of consistency and academic honesty???!
All in all, their attempts are quite desperate. I am actually beginning to feel sorry for them. They actually thought they had a real chance of using the Hanafi madhab as a cover for them, but their hopes were eventually shattered.
You call THAT a reply?!
Zawadi’s reply seems to be somewhat factual. So,mmmclmru, please clarify the points he raised as we are unable to find out the flaws in his reasoning(although from past experience we can safely assume that zawadi is wrong this time also).
Like I said, I don’t know how anyone who has read the article can in good conscience call this a reply. Literally everything he said was predicted and responded to in the original. What ‘points’ did he raise so that we can clarify them?
For example, the article showed in detail the banality of saying that the khawarij are accepted because ‘they don’t lie’…but he made that argument anyway.
And did he explain how a guy who calla Ali and Uthmaan ‘Kaafir’ is an ‘Imam’ and ‘reliable’? Or what, he can just ignore that?
Also, did you ask him to clarify the dozens of other points he ignored from the article (*not that he addressed ANY).
It seems that the tried and tested Salafi tactic of saying ANYTHING at all and claiming you ‘responded’ has worked again.
mmmclmru, Will you please clarify the point he(Zawadi) raised about Abu Hanifa citing AND BELIEVING in narrations from Ikrimah? Also, he quoted from Imam Maturidi that he also believed in Ikrimah’s narration of the”Man Baddala Dinahu” tradition…so please explain.
Its already in the article fanboy: Abu Hanifa narrates from ANYONE, including liars, as he himself says.
And the only place where you even HAVE Abu Hanifa quoting from Ikrima, which would still not prove him to be ‘reliable’, is in a ‘Musnad’ written three hundred years after Abu Hanifa by a guy who everyone rates as a ‘liar’ and ‘unreliable’.
Article and discussion was not about Maturidi’s stance on apostasy (who didn’t quote from Ikrima anyway) nor Abu Hanifa’s stance on apostasy nor apostasy at all (which you guys are obsessed with) but the garbage about Abu Hanifa accepting Ikrima as a ‘reliable’ ‘Imam’, and about forty other points which you are deliberately trying to ignore for a discussion about apostasy.
Ignore the article and start a new discussion. Salafi 101 tactics: ‘Why do you call Ali kaafir?!’ ‘Forget that! I want to know why you don’t kill apostates!’
Drugs.
Of course you would know that if you had actually read the article instead of functioning as a sock puppet for Cheewaadi.
So please get him to reply back to all of those points in the article that you are trying to avoid and also how come people who insult Ali and Uthmaan and call them kaafir are ‘reliable’ and ‘imams’.
Also, this is one of the most pathetic comebacks ever.
Still, worked on you didn’t it!
Yeah, read the article.
Here you go, sailor:
Quotes *in Arabic* from Imam Dhahabi stating that Imam Malik and Imam Muslim **refused** narration from Ikrimah:
“Imam Ahmad, Ibn Sireen, Saeed ibn Musayyab and many others confirm that he [Ikrimah] is Khawaarij. (Mizan al-Itidal Vol 4). Imam Malik refused to narrate from him as did Imam Muslim.”
Here’s an image link to the actual Arabic: https://imgur.com/a/Ym5dQ
More importantly, here’s the archive of Mizan al-Itidal by Imam Dhababi where the image link was taken (page 93): https://ia600209.us.archive.org/10/items/Mizan_Al_Itidal_Thahabi/03_15346.pdf
Btw, never mind the uncritical nature of your response, it also verges on being a tautology.
Thanks!
Its very simple:
These guys should clarify: do they think Khjawarij who takfir Ali are reliable, scholars or ‘Imams’?
Yes or no?
If they say he is not Khawarij, then prove it.
If they say that the only condition to narrate hadith is to be ‘not a liar’ then prove it.
I think one reason these people are very popular is because they offer refutations of accusations by orientalists and evangelicals. I mean the amount of Anti Islamic websites out their number in the millions and coming across them is quite easy. A lot of impressionable youth either leave the religion altogether or search for anything they can find on the web for help, and since these sites are some of the very few available people flock to them.
Here is an example (they haven’t finished refuting them all yet):
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Contrad/Internal/
This is an older list, and the list has only been expanded ten fold, and this isn’t counting the scientific and Historical errors people constantly accuse the Quran of contradictions (this is just ignoring Hadith by the way).
Some of the Accusations are very easy to refute (the accusations of grammatical errors are quite funny, seeing as Arabic as we know it was grounded and standardized around the Quran). But some do require experts in the fields of both Islamic and Archaeological/Biological. YouTube is filled with accusations, I mean I found 10 videos on the related section of a video I was watching “refuting” the Quran.
Until groups like Zaytuna College and Avicenna Academy start tackling these accusations, people will flock to Basaam and co.
“A lot of impressionable youth either leave the religion altogether or search for anything they can find on the web for help, and since these sites are some of the very few available people flock to them.”
I have to disagree. It’s these very sites that are turning young, thinking Muslims away from Islam. The rote dogma, logical inconsistencies, the fallacious reasoning (e.g. exhausting appeals to authority and tradition) and the wild accusations of modernism and heresy are a complete disservice to Islam. The doctrinal labyrinths that these very Salafi-oriented sites and sources have created are the types of mazes that offer no exit only exhaustion.
While I agree with on the fact that a puristic approach of many Muslim these days does have a negative effect on people, I believe people leaving Islam also has to do with the fact that Muslims are the lowest of the low at this point, in almost every aspect. And of course lest we forget the intellectual stagnation certain groups have dragged Islam into, by banning philosophy and science from all discourses. There is also the matter of a tidal wave of websites attacking Islam on multiple fronts, on an intellectual level. Missionaries of the Secular and Christian kind create thousands of websites declaring the Quran is in error, causing a crisis within the youth, and some of the only websites providing answers are the well funded Salafi ones. Curiously they employ philosophy (see Hamza Tzotzis and Bilal Philips) when they need to defend the religion, much to the chagrin of their teachers and devotees.
I totally agree with you on Salafism though, people see a false dichotomy, its either Salafism or bust. Some just leave Islam altogether once they see a Salafi website, some choose to have some kind of false triumphalism, seeing themselves as better than everybody else despite the fact for the vast majority of history Hanafis and Malikis, as well as Shafai madhabs were the main front of scientific progress and expansion of Islam, while Hanbalism remained a small minority in Arabia. It was the Asharis and the Maturidis who fought the Christian theologians and Atheistic philosophers. It was they who secured the deen from intellectual doubt. Now their contributions are all but forgotten.
Usually this triumphalism lasts 5-15 years and the person usually apostates, a Salafi burnout of sorts. With no real spiritual solution, and contradictory doctrines that have always been on the fringe before until petrol dollars were invested in it being jammed down everybody’s throats, people are leaving.
What I am trying to say is that one reason people leave Islam is that the Salafi’s seem to be the only ones with the answers as the are the only ones refuting accusations of Historical and Scientific errors being in the Quran. The hadiths are a different matter, some of their answers to unscientific and contradictory hadiths are pretty funny, although to be fair some of them are well argued, many of them you can not defend no matter how hard you try.
I think organizations like Zaytuna College and Avicenna academy need to gather and collect all these accusations against the Quran,whether they be contradictory verses or historical and scientific errors and refute them, maybe put it in a book, or a PDF and try to distribute it. I think this way you at least win some hearts and minds, that way people can know that it’s not just Salafis with he answers to troubling questions.
When I first had doubts about Islam I relied heavily on Salafi websites to refute the so called scientific and historical errors within the Quran, and started following the Salafi way as I thought they were the only ones with the answers. I know bettter now, but sometimes I still have to go back when people throw accusations of errors at the Quran.
You’ve made some great points. I think on an existential level the two current paradigms most affecting younger Muslims are the scientific one and deconstruction (the latter being more insidious as it’s not as readily evident. I would argue though that Foucault has been THE most dominant philosopher across all the liberal arts in the last 20-30 years). Of course, the likes of Dawkins, Harris and the so-called New Atheists have managed to become as dogmatic as the faiths they attempt to lambast. As a result, there is often a very uncritical allegiance and approach to science from the average person. For example, Darwin didn’t coin the term, “Survival of the fittest, brah!” It was Herbert Spencer, a Social Darwinist and bunk philosopher. Even Philosophy departments today are a shell of what they used to be 30-40 years ago as there is a seismic shift toward a behavioral/biological one. Certainly, metaphysics is treated like some senile old lady rambling in the living room corner.
However, there are considerable works out there that challenge the notions of ‘scientism’ and deconstruction. Huston Smith’s “Beyond The Post-Modern Mind” is an epic read as is Sandra Harding’s “The Racial Economy of Science” (Smith help found the Philosophy department at MIT among other incredibly notable accomplishments. I had the good fortune of meeting once as well). I also think, as Muslims, it’s vital that we look at all faiths to find support and analyses. This is no way entails having to become syncretic either. My understanding of Islam and of God Almighty has only grown from studying the likes of Eckhart, Kierkegaard and even, dare I say, Christian apologists such as C.S. Lewis not to mention philosophers from the other major religious traditions including some of the native traditions of America.
@thecrookedmuslim
Your contributions are a breath of fresh air, thanks for sharing your thoughts!
I hope to learn more from you and your website Insha’Allah
Thanks very much. That’s very kind of you…
thecrookedmuslim, will you please recommend some books about these issues and tell us the address of your website?
Shaykhah-sama Nikita,
Assalaamu `alaykum. I have an English-speaking (only) friend who wants to study Maliki fiqh. Any suggestions? Do you teach?
JazakIllahu khayr in advance.
Also, what are your thoughts on Mufti Abu Layth?
@HubertJohn Of course. Two books off the top of my head are Huston Smith’s ‘Beyond The Postmodern Mind’ and Sandra Harding’s ‘The Racial Economy of Science.’ Here’s my site: https://thecrookedmuslim.wordpress.com/
Pingback: Ikrima as ‘Imam’ of Modern Hanafis – Part 2 – Shaykh Atabek Shukurov an Nasafi
Pingback: Salafis Insist You Accept Genocidal Maniacs as ‘Pious Muslims’…and then Say They Aren’t Violent?! | Asharis: Assemble
Pingback: Rejecting Maturidi for Bukhari – Shaykh Atabek Shukurov an Nasafi
I love that fact that you use manga/anime whenever you make a post lol Salam
I’m guessing glad someone appreciates it!
Salaam sister NIkita.. unfortunately some of the images you have linked to from wordpress sites are not showing up. Is there anyway you can fix that so we can see the images please? 🙂
Thanks
My bad.. i meant MMMCLMRU
Must be because WordPress has undergone some flawed update. I definitely remember reading this page some time ago with all the images showing up fine. I’d say it’s the WordPress developers’ fault, not the users’
Pingback: Rejecting Maturidi for Bukhari – Classical Islam for the Modern World
Pingback: Ikrima as ‘Imam’ of Modern Hanafis – Part 2 – Classical Islam for the Modern World