The Yasir Qadhi Menace
- Thread starter Omar del Sur
- Start date
The Two Main Tricks of the Muslim Crypto Reformist
Crypto Reformist: Someone who pretends like he is a traditional scholar but actually believes that Islam needs to be reformed to bring it in line with modern values of liberalism, secularism, feminism, etc.
Basically, a Reformist who dresses up like a traditional Muslim.
Here are two big strategies Crypto Reformists use in their project to trick the Muslim community into reforming their deen.
RELATED: [Video] Yasir Qadhi’s Shocking Agenda to Reform Islam
1. Word Games
This just involves taking the words and positions in traditional Islam and affirming them but then redefining them to represent modern values.For example, the word qawwam in the Quran. In ayah 4:34, Allah says that men are qawwam over women.
Qawwam means to be an authority, so the ayah is clearly stating the general principle that men have authority over women. This contradicts the feminist principle of equality.
Reformists like Amina Wadud will outright reject this ayah and say “No!” to the Quran, as she discusses in her books. But the Crypto Reformists are more subtle. They will affirm the word qawwam, but redefine it to mean “caretaker” or “protector,” a meaning that is acceptable to feminism. Yes, qawwam can imply being a caretaker/protector, but a maid or a security guard are also caretakers and protectors, but they are not qawwam. Qawwam primarily means authority, and the Crypto Reformists have obscured that.
Or consider the Crypto Reformist who said that Muslims should accept gay marriage. Then when he was criticized for this, he explained that he didn’t mean support for gay marriage. Rather, he meant Muslims should support marriage rights for gay people!
These are nothing but cheap word games.
RELATED: How Compassionate Imams Sneak LGBT Normalization into our Mosques
Or consider another Crypto Reformist who claimed that jihad is only defensive and there is no such thing as “offensive jihad.” When he was refuted and it was established that, yes, jihad according to traditional Islamic doctrine can extend beyond defense, he backtracked and claimed that he also accepts “offensive jihad.” But then he defined “offensive jihad” as preemptive strike only for the sake of fighting an oppressor who is preventing religious freedom! This is obviously not what Islam defines as “offensive jihad” and countless examples from the sirah prove it. But the point is that the Crypto Reformist has created plausible deniability for naïve onlookers. He has redefined a traditional Islamic concept in order to align it with modern liberal sensibilities.
This Crypto Reformist trick is most effective when the Crypto Reformist is speaking to a non-Arabic speaking audience. It can work for native Arabic speakers too, but the added complexity of translation makes it easier for the Crypto Reformist to cover his tracks and generate plausible deniability for his distortions.
2. Being Unequivocal vs. Being Nuanced
Everything in Islam that contradicts liberal sensibilities becomes “complex” and “nuanced” according to the Crypto Reformist. But whatever in Islam that affirms liberal sensibilities becomes an unequivocal, clear-cut pillar of the deen, even when it is not.The reality is that EVERY issue within Islam is nuanced and technical. Even saying Bismillah is nuanced! The word “nuanced” means something that involves many fine details and technical complexities. There are thousands of chapters in the traditional books of Islam just on Bismillah! So to say the Bismillah is nuanced is a true statement in that sense.
But the word “nuance” can also have the connotation of being disputed or being uncertain. Does Islam really teach that wives must obey their husbands? The Reformist will say, “No!” despite all the evidence from the Quran, Sunnah, and scholarly tradition. But the Crypto Reformist is more sophisticated. He will say, “Well, it is a nuanced issue!”
The Crypto Reformist has said something technically true. It is a nuanced issue in the sense that there are a lot of conditions and details. But what the Crypto Reformist is signaling to a trusting and naïve audience is that there is a difference of opinion on this issue or that there is no fact of the matter. It all just depends on one opinion or another. “Who really knows?” is the message.
This, of course, creates confusion and doubt in the audience. And that is the whole purpose! The Crypto Reformist intends to create confusion and doubt about those aspects of Islam that are illiberal and anti-feminist. He wants to cloud those issues as much as possible without saying something that will definitively “out” him as a Reformist. It is a precarious tightrope walk.
But what about, for example, the fact that the Prophet’s masjid ﷺ did not have a partition between the men’s and women’s sections? According to the Crypto Reformist, that is a clear-cut issue and it means that any masjid that separates the men and women’s prayer sections with a barrier (or doesn’t have a women’s section at all) is violating the Sunnah. Suddenly, there is no nuance. There is no extensive discussion of ikhtilaf or ijtihad or context.
RELATED: Where Is the Fiqh? Bad Arguments About Women in the Masjid
RELATED: The Basis for Gender Separation in Islam
Using the “nuanced” approach of Crypto Reformists also means that, if there is a legitimate scholarly ikhtilaf on an issue, the positions that contradict liberalism and feminism are not taught. Those positions are non-existent in the minds of the religious Muslim community who, sadly, rely on Crypto Reformists to learn their deen.
For example, how many in the Muslim community realize that, according to the Maliki school, non-Muslims are not permitted to enter mosques? It is not a problem that lay Muslims are not aware of this, since the position of permissibility is well represented in the other schools. But what is more worrisome is that it seems a large portion of Western students of knowledge are not aware of this ikhtilaf. And there are hundreds, if not thousands, of other issues like this.
Ultimately…
Are the Crypto Reformists any better than the Reformists? Arguably they are worse! Because they are engaged in deception. They have still rejected the Quran, Sunnah, or the Islamic tradition, but they have done it through trickery and deception. This puts them in a position to misguide many more Muslims and non-Muslims than the average Reformist.As Muslim laymen, we need to sharpen our ability to see through the tricks so that we are not thrown into destruction.
Audhubillahi mina shaydaan alrajiim. I take back the illuminated xalimo title.... unless she has revoked these statements.
Samira
Illuminated Xalimo
More shallow thinking from the MuslimSkeptic crowd. This is just a pointless screed aimed at the epiphenomena of unipolar imperialism. It is the hubris of the idealogue: that material problems have discursive solutions. When “da ebul libruls” control the means by which you eat, earn a living, and yes, even the very medium you use to communicate, it is amusing that you think any real stand can be taken against them while this paradigm remains in place. The author even acknowledges this and just laments it (it’s so sad!!! Why are they learning Islam from people who are purposely pushed by spooky algorithms???) Does the author of this article really think that “laymen” are reading this? Or that the average person reads anything at all? Totally screenpoisoned. But at least as the situation continues to degenerate, they will have more to write about. I eagerly await gay pride Mecca 2040.
Samira
Illuminated Xalimo
Whether you like it not, Yasir Qadhi is a bellweather for the fate that awaits all prominent Western (and by extension Eastern as the East is still just the reflection of the West) Muslim figures. “Westernizing” Islam is not primarily an active project with people pushing reformation. The people pushing reformation are but the visual manifestation of a process already well underway within the collective consciousness of the group.
The fundamental starting point is when “Islam” as understood by people like you, loses all relevance in the day-to-day, failing to reproduce itself naturally and seamlessly alongside the routine and worldly. This is because the 20th century demonstrated that even with the slightest bit of political freedom, Muslims failed to meet modernity on their own terms. Instead they created ghettos in a futile attempt to hide from the world (or the West) as they already accepted defeat before its might. Look at how pitiful all attempts that were made to re-establish institutions destroyed by colonialism were. The truth is, Muslims didn’t actually want Islam—a whole way of life which suffuses each moment with its prescence. They wanted yoga five times a day—a spiritual appendage to the bourgeois mode of living. That is why all “trad” Muslims essentially instrumentalize their faith in an appeal to some middle class segment or sentiment (stands against “degeneracy”, atheism, low birth rates). As if these concerns have any precedence outside of the Western dialectic. Hypothetically, if Islam did indeed solve all of those problems, upon doing so what would it offer its adherents? You no longer need the doctor when you are well. They can safely be put out of mind. Eternal truth? What a laugh!
"I heard the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) say: A group of people from my Umma will continue to fight In defence of truth and remain triumphant until the Day of judgment"
Sahih Muslim 1923 - The Book on Government - كتاب الإمارة - Sunnah.com - Sayings and Teachings of Prophet Muhammad (صلى الله عليه و سلم)
Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad (saws) in English and Arabic
sunnah.com
Say, "Obey Allāh and obey the Messenger; but if you turn away - then upon him is only that [duty] with which he has been charged, and upon you is that with which you have been charged. And if you obey him, you will be [rightly] guided. And there is not upon the Messenger except the [responsibility for] clear notification."
Surah An-Nur 54
So remind, [O Muḥammad]; you are only a reminder.
You are not over them a controller.
However, he who turns away and disbelieves
Then Allāh will punish him with the greatest punishment.
Indeed, to Us is their return.
Then indeed, upon Us is their account.
Surah Al-Ghashiyah 21-26
By the dawn
And [by] ten nights
And [by] the even [number] and the odd
And [by] the night when it passes,
Is there [not] in [all] that an oath [sufficient] for one of perception?
Have you not considered how your Lord dealt with ʿAad -
[With] Iram - who had lofty pillars,
The likes of whom had never been created in the land?
And [with] Thamūd, who carved out the rocks in the valley?
And [with] Pharaoh, owner of the stakes?
[All of] whom oppressed within the lands
And increased therein the corruption.
So your Lord poured upon them a scourge of punishment.
Indeed, your Lord is in observation.
Surah Al-Fajr 1-14
And [by] ten nights
And [by] the even [number] and the odd
And [by] the night when it passes,
Is there [not] in [all] that an oath [sufficient] for one of perception?
Have you not considered how your Lord dealt with ʿAad -
[With] Iram - who had lofty pillars,
The likes of whom had never been created in the land?
And [with] Thamūd, who carved out the rocks in the valley?
And [with] Pharaoh, owner of the stakes?
[All of] whom oppressed within the lands
And increased therein the corruption.
So your Lord poured upon them a scourge of punishment.
Indeed, your Lord is in observation.
Surah Al-Fajr 1-14
Even though I disagree with most videos you linked, I agree with the brothers at Sunnah Discourse (formerly known as the Sunni Defense) for rightfully calling out YQ’s whitewashing of Twelver Shi’ism. Twelver Shi’ism is an evil disgusting cult of heresy and I hate seeing Muslims (Sunnis) trying to whitewash and downplay the kufr of this dangerous cult.
"
أهل العلم People Of Knowledge
8 years ago
so basically mr qadhi wants the muslims to love darul kufr, abandon the scholars, rabbaniyoon, and take fatwas from him.
"
bidenkulaha
GalYare
You’ve reached a higher plane of existence. This is a perfect comment. I couldn’t explain it better if I tried an infinite amount
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