Is this the Hasan Spiker who has penned that diatribe? https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/authors/hasan-spiker#:~:text=Hasan Spiker, a philosopher and,carrying out his doctoral research. Firstly, he's from Zaytuna, Mark Hanson's cesspool. Secondly, I've learnt over the years that much more important than boycotting Starbucks or McDonald's, we need to boycott western academia AND people who wear ties when it comes to anything Islam. (I accept everyday Muslims who wear ties, even accept them as religious brothers, but a "da3i" or "shaykh" with a tie is a strict red line for me) This is not a defense of Said Foudeh in any way shape or form, or an offense. I don't have any opinion on him other than what I've seen being discussed here by the brothers. How incredibly ironic - this "philosopher and author from Cambridge" somehow echoes my sentiment of boycotting western academia. https://x.com/RealHasanSpiker/status/1795892852435681655
"Neo-Ash'aris are followers of the autodidact Said Foudah who has no connection to the tradition in terms of tarbiya and talqīn, which is why he has been able to create a false narrative about our later tradition (in which they are basically "rationalists" — yes, anachronistic and anatopistic) which appeals to his closet modernism and that of his followers. To save the world, you just need to be a STEM graduate, and add on a few proofs for the existence of God!! Then all will be well ! When he is not too busy insulting pro-Akbarian Azharis who are simply holding the traditional line (ʿayb yā sheeykh!" he says, with that wonderful nasal inflection of Jordanian street ʿammiyya), Foudah's latest pronouncement from Malaysia, where he has finally been exiled, is that there are "no asrār" in our dīn — which is basically a denunciation of our entire tradition, from Imām al-Ghazālī onwards. His recent interpretations of aḥādīth etc, interpretations which are supposed to be "refutations" of the Akbari school, are so crude and superficial, that they are literally laughable. The prominence of individuals like this is a sign of the times, nothing more. "In the city of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." Foudah is not a thinker, he is a crude exegete whose guiding principle is the Protestant/Salafi (هُمْ رجالٌ ونحنُ رجال)... He mostly ignores kalām qua metaphysics, i.e., the centrality of umūr ʿāmma, and hearkens back to an early kalām such that “to be an ashʿarī’ for Foudeh you have to subscribe to a dogmatic list of doctrines including atomism, and a crude earlier form of occasionalism that presupposes atomism. It’s not just an Akbarianism issue; he dismisses some of the greatest imams of the later Ashʿarī school, like Dawānī, because they are muḥaqqiqūn who come to their own conclusions and do not subscribe to this dogmatism... The craven silence on this ill-mannered upstart who has appointed himself the ultimate judge on the nature of our tradition — against the effective consensus of the actual later tradition — has been simply shameful. Recently however, he has stuck his neck out way too far [by making remarks against Shaykh al-Akbar that he will put him to rest]... There have been complaints directed against him made to the Malaysian authorities, who have shipped in various Azharis to refute him... Major ʿulamāʾ in Egypt, Lebanon, Malaysia and elsewhere, have had enough. He will probably survive, but as more of a cult leader than ever. His pretensions to being the emblem of Ahl al-Sunna in our times is completely shot through. He never should have gone after taṣawwuf — and he should have known his own size. That's the problem with lacking traditional tarbiya — you lack the mirror to be able to see your own size."
