Dr Yasir Qadhi and the Sealed Nectar Controversy (unlocking Advanced Seerah)

Added: 2026-05-08

[00:00:02]is history is the only chapter in Islamic science that is open to anyone.

[00:00:08]There is no entry- level barrier. It's just open. Okay. Uh the science is not guarded. This is one of the reasons why a s although it is a primary source of instruction, it is not considered a formal source as the others are. And I'll explain to you in later as we go down the down the rabbit hole. It's not considered a source of for example legislation.

[00:00:33]It's a mistake many people make. I read a story in the s the prophet did this sallallahu alaihi wasallam and now they want to apply that. It's not it's not one of the sources of Sharia. It never has been and never will be. So it is a bit of an elusive science in that it is one of the signs that we all recognize s but it's not a guarded science. However, within that there is an opportunity for the average person to also indulge and also develop their critical thinking.

[00:01:00]Sierra in history they're open to critical thinking in a way that studies in inul in hadith is not open to critical thinking in terms of applying your own intellect or maybe perhaps your your opinions or extrapolating things.

[00:01:16]They're not open to that because if that were the case said this dein is not by by logic certain things are just you apply them by principle and upon the revelation sense you accept and apply them sor is different so it's history so it's an opportunity for us then to indulge and to connect and to explore the doors are open here of course there is a limit a certain limit and extent to which we can actually stretch the fabric but it is still malleable and flexible.

[00:01:47]So that having been said, we embark upon this journey for three years. I first of all want to thank each and every one of you for taking the uh courageous step of entering uh this program. It's not for everyone. It's certainly not for the light-hearted uh but it's for the curious and a seriously intentioned students of Sira. those who genuinely want to learn without any barriers because I don't have barriers when I teach. I believe the individual who wants to learn should be given the honor and respect of seeing everything.

[00:02:24]No blinkers here. I don't think you're intelligent enough to understand this story. I'm going to no everything is available but within context. We'll give as much as possible explanations and the sources. The second reason is because this is something that has not been done before. So the serography is something that has not been done before. It's a unique unique endeavor and one that I will stick to for three years with tala after which I don't intend to do it ever again. So you have a unique opportunity here to explore and experience this program firsthand. If you decide to take this information and teach others, you're more than welcome to do that. Okay? But it's not something that will be done ever again. So inshallah, Allah bless us all to see the three years and to accomplish what we have intended to accomplish. All right?

[00:03:10]I'm going to begin with a quote from Dr. Yaser Kadi. May Allah have mercy on him and preserve him for us. He's one of the, as far as I'm concerned, in the English language, one of the premier scholars and voices for scholarship in the Muslim world. And we have to appreciate that we have such people still around and still sharing their knowledge. Uh, and they do so for free.

[00:03:32]we benefit from them uh online and sometimes through the the work they produce and the the courses they they uh they provide us. Uh Dr. Yasaki I don't have to explain who he is. I don't have to introduce him to you but I should emphasize the importance of such people in the um often times those who are not educated and I say that in a very very uh with good intention are not able to appreciate scholarship for what it what it truly is. Yes.

[00:04:01]Scholars make mistakes. Yes, sometimes they have a wrong opinion. But it shouldn't mean you discard everything they have produced just because you found one error, right? Or one misunderstanding.

[00:04:12]Doing that would be a tremendous mistake, a grave error. We take and we leave and we take the best from each and every scholar. Dr. Yazari, we know him to be one of the most famous um authors of Sierra in the English speaking world.

[00:04:26]Many people when they begin their studies of s or at least they immerse themselves into s they may have come across his lengthy series on the s of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam which was uh I believe it was aired by Islam channel one of these channels anyway but he became famous online uh on YouTube he has since written a book based on this series for two reasons.

[00:04:50]Number one, he felt the need to have a documented work rather than just a video series. The video series is good up until a certain level. But when you want to get serious, you need to start reading books. Reading books, there is no substitute for that. It doesn't matter how advanced technology becomes.

[00:05:07]How much AI we have, there is no substitute for reading books. You will never be able to say to yourself, I don't have to read books anymore. I have AI. It's never enough. So the first reason why this book is written is because he had to and he felt compelled to document this Sierra uh knowledge that he was compiling and delivering over the years. So the book came about.

[00:05:28]The second reason is to elevate the pitch because again at the level of YouTube and sometimes even programs you may have taken on the weekends or in Ramadan or casual programs it is insufficient.

[00:05:40]You have to elevate the pitch. So he writes and I'm going to read his words verbatim in the introductory uh page section of this wonderful book the prophetic sir by Dr. He writes the following.

[00:05:55]I decided to teach what I call an intermediate advanced level.

[00:06:02]He'll explain what this means. So he begins by saying he decided to teach an intermediate advanced level. Sierra a basic level for me would be something like the sealed nectar.

[00:06:15]A simple chronological narrative from the beginning to the end with few references and hardly any benefits extracted. These are his words. A beginner level for him is the sealed nectar.

[00:06:31]A simple chronological narrative. So these are three very key words. I'm going to break it down for you. From the beginning to the end with few references and hardly any benefits extracted. This is ideal for a beginning students. Now most people when they say they've studied sir or they know sir they were at this level and they think they're at a higher level.

[00:06:58]The sealed nectar and we'll explore and evaluate it in the second year was an entry uh into a competition that was uh announced on Sierra writing. It was an entry, a competitive entry. And of course, it is a household name, but it's not the sort of material you want to base your knowledge on. It's a beginner level. It's a simple, in other words, it's not deep. It doesn't give you complex um perspectives about the Sierra. It's a very simple, simplistic, chronological. It follows year by year by year, which is actually a good format for Sierra and any form of history. The chronological format is a good one, but it's also like a storytelling format. In the beginning, this happened. In the end, this happened. It's for storytelling. And it's a narrative. This is a very key word, a narrative. A narrative means a story. And the narrator decides the story they want to tell you or the version of the story they want to tell you. So, whenever you read a narrative, you need to know you're reading a version from many versions. a limited perspective from many perspectives of what the author intends for you to take away. So you cannot say I read the narrative of fan and now I know what sir is. No, you know what he wants you to know about the s.

[00:08:15]So the seal nectar and we have to praise it because it is of course was a premier format for sier for the English speaking and also in many Arabic world in the Arabic modern world it was a premier entry and many of us we entered Sierra through this door. So we have to praise it. However, it is not the summit. It is not the peak of sir studies. If you believe that this is what means this what sir means uh you've studied and you've read or even when the moon split and that you know s news flash you've just touched the very beginning of s. So Dr. Yasi I'm very happy he said that he's qualified to say that. He says the seal of nectar with all of its we praise and we ad we admire it. It is nevertheless a very simple narrative.

[00:09:03]It's a story from one perspective and a very simplistic one of that with few references and hardly any benefits extracted. Now at this point I would have to disagree with our respected doctor. I would say there is benefit from seal nectar. I wouldn't say there's hardly benefit.

[00:09:20]There is a lot of benefit in seal nectar especially the the revised editions which now you will find there are diagrams there are maps there are some references so I wouldn't go as far as saying there are no benefits however for an advanced student you could say he's correct in that sense so this is a very very clear statement he's made here and the reason why he's mentioning sealed nect is not because the other books are better or that it's the only one that has problems it's because this is the most famous book it's the most common reference people have to So he's given an exemplary analysis of one of many books and there are many I could give you here many books as such we will study them in the second year inshallah book by book we study them in the second year. So he begins by saying that then he says however this level is ideal for the beginning students. So the children, the adolescence, the new Muslim or maybe the Muslim who doesn't really take his dean seriously and now he wants to begin studying although the student who doesn't speak Arabic at all and has no access to the Arabic text and scholarship. This book will be simple and it's a good beginning. It's a beginning. It's not the destination.

[00:10:27]It's the beginning. I need to emphasize that. Then he moves on to what he calls intermediate. So he says an intermediate level when you get into the intermediate level uh and for those of you who took the program you all took it actually you all took the the um the interview process I had to interview each and one of you I asked very clearly at what level is your serial studies beginning intermediate advanced there was a reason for that so an intermediate level would begin to discuss it is discussion based it's not just this is the story as we tell you it and accepted as it is been conveyed to you.

[00:11:04]There is discussion, there is dialogue, there is analysis. You are now entering an intermediate phase of serious studies. And this is why in the deeper ser program every 8 weeks there will be a serious symposia. And this is where you the students will have to discuss and even debate some very interesting narratives within what we study as part of the deeper ser program. So the beginning of intermediate studies is when you begin to discuss ideas. It is not sufficient just to listen to someone else telling you the information and to accept it you must begin to discuss and even at times debate the ideas. So he says you begin to discuss where sources of each incident are found and again so there is a discussion based narrative discussion based format but also the source text analysis where is this coming from so for example in our first session of deeper I mentioned an example or a story about II and the angels who visited him or the angel who visited him thrice. As part of that discussion, we had a long discussion about the nature of that narrative. I also gave references. So now this is sufficient for you to go away to uh what we say to interrogate the references and to find out more about the authenticity or the lack thereof of this story, this narrative. So you've now entered an intermediate level study when it comes to Sierra. So you will discuss what you study. You'll also interrogate the sources. So an intermediate level would begin to discuss the sources of each incident where they found in other words which book which author and extract some practical benefit from each from every episode of the s. So this is where when we extract we will take an idea or a narrative we will verify the source and qualify it and then we will try to extrapolate meaning and purpose from there. So for example again in our first session of deeper I gave a narrative presented in when he says the third when he escaped when he ran away from the from the Arabs the Muslim Arabs at the end of the uh his uh the societed empire he took away a thousand chefs and a thousand musicians. So we began to extract meaning from that. What could he possibly mean? Is it literally a thousand chefs, literally a thousand musicians? Or are we going to apply some critical insight by looking at for example Caldon's perspective on history and the historical cycle of dynasties?

[00:13:38]So in that we had a wonderful discussion about what does it mean? Did he literally take a thousand of each or does it represent something greater than that? And of course we had some back and forth. In the end we agreed it wasn't necessarily a thousand. That is hyperbole.

[00:13:54]The meaning was he had reached a level of decadence and attachment to worldly things, enjoyment of the stomach and enjoyment of entertainment. And that is symptomatic according to of the end of a a dynastic cycle. So that thousand should not be read literally as a thousand. This is how children read.

[00:14:14]They read literally. The most sophisticated and historical reading of that would be they had reached the end of their cycle. So the societ had reached the end. The Muslims therefore just toppled them over. They already dead. So methylan an example of this would be in the Quran Allahh describes how stood erect and he was on his staff leaning and he was observing the jin as they were building the palaces and working for him in construction.

[00:14:47]However, he had been in that position for a long time, standing and looking and leaning on the staff until a small ant or a small insect began to eat away at the staff until eventually the staff uh there was it corroded a bit and he lost balance and and he fell over. And the reality was he had been dead a long time already. He had already been dead a long time. But the gin did not know that until the staff was shifted and he fell over out of balance. So the point being the dynasty was already dead. The invasion was only a symptom of something that was already there. It had already been decadence for a long time and the Muslims coming in was just a final you could say nail in the coffin. So from that one statements a lot of benefit comes out of it. You can see so he mentions here at the intermediate level what you're doing now is you're reading you're looking for sources and you're looking for information that can help you extrapolate meaning and purpose from these narratives. Very important. This is a very rich text by the way and it just goes to show the level of intellect and application that Dr. Yasakadi puts into his work. We have to appreciate this uh wonderful an amazing insight. So now he mentions an extremely advanced. So we've gone to the beginning. We've gone to the intermediate level. We're going to look at the advanced. This is the level way above the highest level. What does that include? He mentions an extremely advanced level would require an encyclopedic effort of extracting each and every source of an incident with an anal with an analysis with an analysis of his chain of narrators and then mentioning any controversies and misunderstandings along with an exhaustive extraction of his benefits.

[00:16:33]Subhan Allah. And this would be the atari's level. Imabari if you look at his exactly the level he's at that's why he said an extremely advanced because we can get to advanced we may not we will never get to extremely advanced but an advanced level is a bit lower than that an extremely advanced level is to look at every single incident look at the different versions of narrations for that incident evaluate each one and then qualify them dismiss the controversies and misunderstandings and then give the benefit of a wide that's a lot of work.

[00:17:13]is what he will do is for every single incident he'll give you all the narrations whether they're right or wrong he doesn't go he doesn't evaluate the correct veracity of each one but he gives you everything he'll tell you version one was this with all the asid all the narrators version two of the story was this with all the narrators all the way down so the book is very very you can the collection is very vast and in fact I'm going to stare off a bit from the topic here at is the summits the peak of historioggraphy in Islamic history. The peak you don't get any better than him. Everything is preserved and the again the undescerning eye considers him to be somebody who includes weak narrations in his book and they will accuse him of narrating weak narrations not understanding.

[00:18:02]His method of study is not to authenticate. It is to give the advanced students all the material so that the advanced students can do this analysis.

[00:18:11]Compare them, authenticate them, remove the controversies and misunderstandings, elucidate that things that are not clear and then give benefits the is the work of scholars. That is the work of scholars. That's why he says an extremely advanced level requires this.

[00:18:28]So at he gives you the foundations which is every possible narration connected to this incident. it is now left to the advanced students to do the sifting and working with. So he says this is what an advanced extremely advanced level would be. Then he says such an advanced level project has not been done in any language and frankly is a neverending project.

[00:18:54]Now I don't speak every language on earth. I don't think Dr. Yas speaks every language on earth. So we cannot in all justice we cannot say that no one has done it before unless we speak every language and we've read every book. It may be that some have tried. We don't know. But in terms of probability and what we do know in terms of the big collections, there aren't any major collections we know of at least in English or Arabic. That's the language I have access to that has that have done these. There have been books in recent times that have tried to authenticate and there are many collections of even did one of them and many others. But it's not to the level of taking every narration, analyzing, extrapolating, presenting and concluding as he as far as he he's concerned. This level of scholarship has not been accomplished in any language. And I believe Dr. Yasaki is certainly far more qualified to make that statement. [clears throat] Although, as I said before, unless we speak every language on earth, it will be difficult to prove this theory correct. although it's highly likely that he's correct. So the point here is we don't expect you to reach the level of advanced level because it's a very very high level and it's quite frankly it's a never- ending project and this is another reason why when we hear people saying for example I have a project on s and it's going to be advanced and it's going to include everything in the history of s that's a bit of a ambitious promise to make because there's a lot to cover. So therefore the compromise here is to find a medium between the advanced level or the extremely advanced and the intermediate level. This is the space where where where in which uh the ambitious student can attain some level of accomplishment between the extremely advanced and the intermediate. So he has called this uh level intermediate advanced level. So if you go back to the beginning of his statement, he says, "I have decided to teach what I call an intermediate advanced level." So now he's going to explain what this is.

[00:21:09]I mean to indicate that my s should reference all incidents to their primary sources. So first of all, when you read his s every incident has a source reference and this again distinguishes casual historians from serious historians. A serious historian will always question the sources before anything else. Before denying something, you quickly ask where is the source for this? You don't just deny because you don't like the story or it makes you feel uneasy. You ask where is the reference for this? So a really serious student again he mentions here in his book everything is referenced and cited citations as well are also necessary. Then he says and derive benefits from every episode of the sir. So once again a basic sir program will tell you the stories. This happened this person did this and this was a conclusion and it's immediate level would discuss these topics. What can we get from this information? What can we extrapolate from this? What can we learn from this? And the advanced would go into the different variations and try to qualify each one which again we're not trying to reach that level.

[00:22:21]But in the in the intermediate advance we want references for everything. We want to have benefits derived from every episode. Then he says it should also bring in more advanced nuances and discussions where applicable. So as he's teaching his s in his book he will have the references the benefits or lessons and also nuances and discussions. So an example of this a great example is uh the story of Buran princess or empress Ban of theid empire a very small story that has preserved in which he praises her leadership.

[00:23:03]this story when it's put in the public the basic level students series of students uh students of Sierra may have one response to that but if you want to get to the advanced level or the intermediate level you need to first ask what is the source of this story number one number two can we extrapolate meaning from this or what questions will follow if we believe this story to be true and we have statements from the s from the sunnah and they seem to be contradictory how do we recon sound at least how do we discuss the possibility of both being correct at this level you're thinking at an at an immediate intermediate level if not advanced level and finally any benefits we can extract from this and these are nuance and sensitive topics so the intermediate advanced level this is the level at which the deeper zero program will be running for the 3 years I will continually press your buttons I'll make you feel uncomfortable and I'll compel you to go and search for references number one make extrapolations, derive lessons and discuss your findings at every single level. The reason for that is we have had a long time maybe 20 30 years now of level one sir. So for the last 30 years from the 80s onwards we've had level one s in the public domain. We've all read the wonderful seal of nectar or when the moon split or the life of Muhammad and many other books written in that space of time and this has always has always been level one understanding of Sierra when the internet was then introduced we had many series on YouTube and sometimes audio cassettes the CD collections for example of um the late sheh may Allah have mercy on him was a very very popular CD collection at the time then the internet came about and we lectures and series online. But all of that is level one.

[00:24:56]All of that is level one. We're now at a time where the historicity of Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam is under attack. Where there are Muslims who are coming across some narratives about the Sierra that they have no means of analyzing or even making sense of. And so we need to elevate the pitch. The consciousness has to elevate. We we need to now begin operating at an intermediate level if not advanced level so that we can not only navigate properly but also understand the history of Allah sallallahu alaihi wasallam in the way it should be understood. If you were to read the entirety of what and have written concerning the many of these stories and narratives may be difficult to digest. Many of the chapters included may be difficult for the contemporary mind to digest and the first reaction they have when they come across a narrative that is not easy is not easy for them to digest is to accuse the person of either spreading fitna or uh somehow reviling the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam. And this is the natural reaction because again when we are confronted with new information sometimes we either fight or we take flight. We take flight by denying all together it didn't happen. I don't believe in it. I'm going to go away and just don't tell me about this anymore.

[00:26:13]Or we fight the person in terms of you must be the person spreading mischief.

[00:26:17]But again, that's a result of 30 years of level one thinking when it comes to SA 30 years and there has not been a critical analytical approach to s in the public domains and that has to stop that has to end. So I'm very happy that he has written this book and I recommend each and every one of you on this program to acquire a copy of Dr. The yasad is the s of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam was published about 5 years ago.

[00:26:44]So the intermediate level is where we are. All of you in this program are are at this level and I I I expect of you to operate at that level. I expect of you to ask for the references to seek to find some meaning outside the apparent the obvious and to apply critical thinking and derive benefits for from these lessons that you learn as you go across. Okay. So and the discussion is very important as well to discuss to discuss with others with the teachers that's why you have the serious society discuss these things. If you find something interesting or different perspective, discuss it. And then he concludes by saying it should also bring in a more advanced nuance and discussion where applicable such as authenticity of narrations where required and differences within the primary source. So this is something you can find in the se of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam contemporary and original analysis Dr. Yas kadi 2023.

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