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SPECIAL COURSES
Course 1: Mukhtasar Khalīl Course 2: Usūl al-Fiqh – Semester 1. Al-Bājī’s Al-Ishārah fī Usūl alFiqh; Semester 2. Ibn Juzayy’s Taqrīb al-Wusūl ilā ‘Ilm al-Usūl
Course 3: Hadīth and fiqh in action – Imām Mālik, Muwatta’,
Prophetic reports and ‘amal: Methodology, evidences and effective causes of juristic rulings
Course 4: Tafsīr of the Qur’ān and applied Arabic through one text –
Ibn Juzayy’s At-Tashīl li-’Ulūm at-Tanzīl
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Each course runs for 1 year: From Monday, 16 December 2013, to the week ending on 14 December 2014. The annual fee for enrolment and participation is $40 per course, all inclusive. Students taking two of the three courses will pay $70 for the combo, while $100 is the globular fee for all 3 courses. Payment is by paypal to
[email protected]; in emergency cases, alternatives will be considered. Registration is open at once. The courses are scheduled to commence on Monday, 16 December 2013. Interested people are requested to express their interest to the Sulwān School secretary, by writing to that effect at
[email protected] and booking their place, as soon as possible.
The courses are ideal for committed students who are prepared to apply themselves earnestly to the subjects. Full-time devotion to Islamic knowledge is however not a requirement: We cater for different types of people, with different levels of daily commitments and opportunities. A virtual classroom (Wiziq-style) will be used.
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Each lesson lasts 45 minutes, followed by 15 minutes of questions and answers. Times will be such as to permit participation either side of the Atlantic as much as possible, with the option of recorded lessons being additionally available.
Course 3 (Hadīth & fiqh in action): Mondays. Course 1 (Mukhtasar): Tuesdays Course 4 (Tafsīr & Arabic): Fridays, save from December 2013 to end-January 2014 when it will run on Thursdays. Course 2 (Usūl al-Fiqh): Saturdays.
Monday / Tuesday / Friday (Thursday) courses: 19h30 GMT to start with (Spring-Summer); Saturday course: 15h45 GMT to start with (Spring-Summer).
Only the capacity to read Arabic is an essential requirement: levels of proficiency will simply frame the corresponding levels of enjoyment of the courses. The texts of the relevant works will be used and each passage gone through in detail: nothing will be rushed through.
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If the text is not in the student’s possession, links will be provided to pdf versions capable of being downloaded and/or scanned pages will be mailed to participants. Further written material will be made available to students at no extra charge. Opportunity for interaction through the likes of questions and answers is ensured.
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Course 1: Mukhtasar Khalīl
Why:
The Mukhtasar is the cornerstone of reliable juristic rulings in the madhhab of Mālik. To our knowledge, no online course on it, at least not a comprehensive one, is presently available to Western Muslims or Muslims making use of English. While in our Sulwān School we cover the fiqh of family affairs (marriage etc) and the fiqh of proprietary transactions (sale and so on) by inter alia making vast use of commentaries on Mukhtasar Khalīl (so lovers of holistic knowledge might want to join the Sulwān School as well), here we will deal with the fiqh
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of ‘ibādāt, similar subjects and miscellaneous topics gathered by Khalīl at the end of his book. In the first year, we will tackle acts of worship beginning with ritual purity and prayer.
We will simplify matters so as to understand the text “spaciously”, beyond the short cryptic sentences of the author. We will distend the text through its commentaries; We will explain at length Khalīl’s terminology; We will study the evidences (adillah) behind the rulings; We will compare the rulings with their counterparts in our schools; All these benefits extend beyond Khalīl’s text: They enrich participants’ knowledge across the entire fiqh of Mālik and even the fiqh of Islam generally regardless of school affiliation.
Participants will accordingly come out of it, Allah willing, with a firm grasp of fiqh and Mālikī fiqh, nay, with a firm grasp of Islamic legal thinking and Islamic science generally. As we said, the technical terminology employed by Khalīl in his work will be explained exhaustively. We will begin at once, from the first lesson, with the explanation of the text, but in every lesson we will also tackle a terminological aspect which is general to the text [E.g. what is meant by Khalīl when noting “a disagreement” (khilāf) or “two or more views” (qawlayn aw-aqwāl)].
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We will also deal with such themes as Khalīl himself, his place in the school, the epoch of abridgments, pros and cons of abridgments, and the main works which have been authored on his primer. Reference will be made to authoritative voices in the madhhab and outside the madhhab. The modern elucidation of the Abridgment, by at-Tāhir Āmir, i.e. At-Tashīl li-Ma`ānī Mukhtasar Khalīl, will be used as a primary guide, but alongside it reference will be made to the other famous commentaries on Khalīl’s source text. As much as circumstances allow us, we will also say something about the mother-books of the madhhab, the main works written by its adherents, and the books which are relied upon or otherwise when issuing a fatwā or acting in one sense or the other in a mas’alah.
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Course 2: Usūl al-Fiqh
Why:
This is an age where Muslims want to understand how juristic rulings are “manufactured”, the more so as every second person feels like teaching us the Dīn by quoting one or two textual authorities out of context and disconnected from the principles pursuant to which they have been culled from the sources. It is thus necessary to develop a learned taste for how the raw material
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of the Law is shaped up in order to construct the finished products, i.e. the derivative rulings of the fiqh: This course is conceived with that aim in mind. Fiqh and usūl al-fiqh are inseparable twins. Usūl al-fiqh help draw out the logician in us. Logic is a revered science among Muslims, and reviving it acts as shield against obtrusive “Salafi” evangelism. While there are online courses available on such as Imām alHaramayn’s Al-Waraqāt (and probably on the Hanafī approach to usūl), no comparable course is offered on Mālikī usūl and the essential texts in this science by Mālikī specialists. Semester 1 – Al-Bājī’s Al-Ishārah fī Usūl al-Fiqh
We will examine the whole of the text, accompanied by annotations on it by the contemporary scholar from Algeria al-Majjājī. Cross-references will be made to other writings of al-Bājī and to other introductory works on the science (such as al-Mashshāt’s Al-Jawāhir athThamīnah, and ‘Abdullāh ash-Shinqītī’s Nashr al-Bunūd).
Semester 2 – Ibn Juzayy’s Taqrīb al-Wusūl ilā ‘Ilm al-Usūl
Same as its textual twin (= we will probe it in full): By the completion of the second semester, students will have gained a solid understanding, at a
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beginner’s level, of how jurists extract rulings and arch-rulings from the source material of the Book, the Sunnah, analogy and the other springheads of the Law [From that platform, students can later profitably attend a course on the guidelines governing ijtihād in Mālik’s madhhab based on Dr. Sādiq alGharyānī’s agile text on the subject enriched by many practical examples from masā’il of fiqh; Likewise from that solid platform they might plunge in subsequent years into courses on ash-Sharīf at-Tilimsānī’s Miftāh al-Wusūl ilā Binā’ al-Furū` ‘alā al-Usūl].
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Course 3: Hadīth and fiqh in action – Imām Mālik, Muwatta’,
Prophetic reports and ‘amal: Methodology, evidences and effective causes of juristic rulings
Why:
This is a perfumed field: We will be dealing with the Prophetic sunnah, with the art of transmitted reports, and with Madinese civilization driven forward by Companions and other Predecessors. In so doing, we will shed light on the Ur-text of the madhhab, Al-Muwatta’, on fiqh of hadīth, on the true reality of ‘amal Ahl al-Madīnah and on the ingredients of jurisprudential examination (generally and Mālikī specifically).
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That is ever more necessary nowadays, due to attacks by deviant sects and misconceptions about ‘amal and why Mālik and the adherents to his methodology arrived at rulings. No such innovative course exists anywhere in the world.
Have you ever wondered why Imām Mālik reported a Prophetic hadīth in
his book, yet he did not act upon it? Have you been harassed by fellow Muslims who hold against you the existence of a hadīth in a mas’alah where your Imām adopted a different
position? Have you felt uncomfortable about reciting qunūt in Subh or fasting “6 days in the year” from Shawwāl, as you were unaware or inadequately aware of the ‘amal supporting your Imām’s choice of ruling? This course is designed so as to guide your steps in all those matters:
• Mālik’s hadīth methodology in the Muwatta’ broadly, and all the ahādīth he himself reported in it but he did not act upon, chapter by chapter, with the explanation of the reasons for that. • Ahādīth in other than the Muwatta’ (the Sahīhayn etc) which Mālik discarded in favour of other evidences (adillah) in his rulings, chapter by chapter, with the explanation of the reasons for that. • The rulings which Mālik and the adherents to his school built upon the ‘amal of Ahl al-Madīnah (also compared with contrary rulings chosen by different schools), chapter by chapter, with the explanation of the reasons for that.
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Course 4: Tafsīr of the Qur’ān and applied Arabic through one
text – Ibn Juzayy’s At-Tashīl li-’Ulūm at-Tanzīl
Why: The Qur’ān is the center of Islamic life, for each and every one of us; and Arabic is the portal to understanding it and the rest of Islamic sciences. Flooded by distorted redefinitions of the Book and the Dīn, we need a reliable guide to take us to the spring essential meanings of Allah’s Signs in the language He sent them down in. Ibn Juzayy, the best medium-size classical exegesis, is the ideal guide. No such course exists anywhere in the Islamic West beyond traditional Muslim lands.
Half of the mushaf is planned to be included in this year of study. Reading a text such as Ibn Juzayy’s exegesis of the Book is incomplete unless the Arabic is grasped as we do so. We will therefore join two benefits:
- The whole commentary by Ibn Juzayy, sentence by sentence; - Teaching Arabic (syntax, morphology, and rhetoric) through it.
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Students will attain a formidable hold on the essential meanings of Allah’s Speech in the language in which He sent it down it and addressed all of us by, in so doing attaining first mastery of that source-language itself.