MHQadri said:
Anyway of contacting the Shaykh. He is student of Dr Shaykh Ali Jumu'ah.
I'm impressed by this Azhari's Arabic. Mostly we tend to hear a mixture of classical and colloquial during lectures.
yes he is a very gifted scholar indeed. His duroos on the 'arabyin-an-nawawi are available on youtube and are extremely informative.
Mawlana aslam azhari, who was at azhar-ash-shareef when azhari sahib visited, says that shaykh usama displayed exemplary adab towards him. And because hazrat doesn't allow it, he would find excuses to kiss hazrat's hands again and again.
but a few things I found disturbing about him:
1) He, like many other azharis, appends 'rahimahullah' to names such as ibn-hazm (and probably ibn-taymiyyah and shawkani too. i haven't heard these directly but for ibn-hazm you can see his 'arbayin dars-4 start). although shaykh sa'eed faudah has decried this practice openly.
2) He is not of those azharis, who despite being sunni-shafi-misri, do not like ali-jumu'ah, because of his odd stances. I would expect a scholar of his caliber to be otherwise.
3) He was on the tv-show with habib-ali with that infamous interviewer who would have us all become 'sheer-o-shakar' with the yahood and nasara.
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But aqida-wise he is excellent. there is jumu'ah bayan on youtube where he's doing a lengthy istigatha to rasulAllah(sallallahualayhiwasallam) from the minbar itself.
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its because of these issues that a sunni should avoid going to azhar unless he gets extremely well-grounded in 'ilm, both aqida and fiqh.
I've come to know of a sunnis from indo-pak who became sulha-kullis (one even became a wahhabi) after spending some time at azhar.
there's one fellow whom azhari sahib advised against going there but went nonetheless and became a denier of 'talaq-e-thalthah' and this is gumrahi. he also developed other non-sunni tendencies.
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an eye-witness told me that, just a month prior to the uprising against Hosni Mubarak, Qardawi had visited azhar (having received permission after several years). He shared the stage with many senior sunni scholars including ali-jumuah and dr. Buti (alayhirrahamh). In it he made a statement that:
"all are ahlussunnah. we simply have to 'sufi'ize the salafis a bit and 'salfi'ize the sufis a bit"!
No one opposed him. Ali-jumuah barely spoke 5mins. Others also spoke on neutral issues.
Only shaykh Buti said,"We don't consider the salafis to be ahlussunnah. The ikhtilaf is in the principles. So the way to unity is to discuss these."
not sufficient but better than complete silence.
(some say that qardawi's visit to misr had a role to play in the uprising that started a month later. Mubarak had exiled him for quite a long time.)
May Allah('azzawajal) protect us and our coming generations from all sorts of deviance, including deference to the ahlul-bidah. Ameen!
wassalaam.
