Isnad Academy Podcast

Every hafiz in this country recited to a teacher who recited to a teacher, all the way back to Rasulullah ﷺ. Mawlana Qari Saleem Gaibie has given his life to guarding that chain and to mapping it.

He memorised the Quran at Darul Uloom Zakariyya, then sat for years with Qari Ayyub Ishaq through the seven and the ten qira'at. He holds ijazat from teachers in South Africa, Egypt, Syria, Pakistan and Nigeria, has taught tajwid, qira'at and the sciences of the Quran at Darul Uloom al-Arabiyyah al-Islamiyyah in the Strand for more than two decades, leads al-Tanzil Institute of Quranic Sciences, teaches full time at the Imam Kurani Institute for Islamic Studies, and wrote the first English commentaries on the core texts of the science.

In this episode: how an ijazah is really earned, why almost every chain of the Quran today passes through Ibn al-Jazari, what makes a chain high, a doubtful link that spread through recent ijazahs, and the advice Mawlana Taha Karaan, rahimahullah, gave him: "Did you find your Sakhawi already?" He closes with Ayat al-Kursi.

00:00 28 links to the Prophet ﷺ

00:49 Welcome to ROOTED

02:38 A grandmother who loved the Quran

03:23 First khatm with Imam Naeim Moerat

08:40 Hifz at Darul Uloom Zakariyya

11:20 Hearing Qari Ayyub recite the qira'at

13:12 Years with Qari Ayyub Ishaq

17:50 How students learn at al-Tanzil

26:15 Why an ijazah is only the beginning

27:27 The texts: from the Tuhfah to Salsabil al-Shafi

29:18 The three after the seven

33:05 The four shadhdh readings

38:01 What it takes to earn an ijazah

43:12 Studied here, at home

47:22 Why every chain passes through Ibn al-Jazari

51:47 What makes a chain high

55:08 A doubtful link: Shaykh Uthman Murad

58:17 The early reciters of the Cape

1:04:47 Founding al-Tanzil

1:08:31 The first English commentaries

1:15:50 Shaykh al-Husari

1:17:48 Mawlana Taha Karaan and "find your Sakhawi"

1:25:24 Advice for a student starting today

1:29:36 His books

1:33:25 A dua for his students

1:35:02 Ayat al-Kursi

1:36:22 Closing

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/0-_NoYFDNdo

ROOTED, the full series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf_aPJtuAk9c

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Her daughter was seven and ten juz into her hifz when Dr Hajir Bawa asked her to pause. Radia broke down: "Mommy, please, I don't want to stop. I want to be like our Nabi."

Dr Hajir Bawa was born in District Six, married at sixteen, and worked as a textile designer before the Quran took over her life. She co-founded the Jameyyatul Qurra Girls Hifth School at IPSA with the late Shaykh Yusuf Booley, studied at Darun Na'im, and after decades of teaching returned to the student's chair to earn a PhD in education. Today she teaches at Zahraa Institute and researches the wellbeing of the teachers who carry the Quran.

A note on sound: the host microphone failed to record. We have restored the room audio as best we can.

00:00 Cold open

00:23 Welcome

02:28 The deen at home, District Six

04:48 Married at sixteen

06:59 Falling in love with the Quran

08:20 Shaykh Yusuf Booley

12:10 Darun-Na'im

15:00 From reciting to understanding

16:14 Jameyyatul Qurra Girls Hifth School

18:07 Teaching women and children in the early years

19:03 Shamiela, and the Tuesday class

21:56 Take the fruit, plant a seed

22:31 Back in the student's chair

26:56 The PhD

29:37 The gaps in our madrasas

30:33 A second study: the hafiz teachers

35:41 Sitting at the feet of a teacher

37:48 Radia and Zahraa Institute

38:55 The hardest season

40:59 To the woman who thinks it is too late

44:03 Every teacher was first a student

44:23 Dua

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/jUFzUkc-GaI

ROOTED, the full series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf_aPJtuAk9c

Read FRUITS and join the mailing list: https://isnadacademy.com/fruits

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The Prophet, Allah bless him and give him peace, said that the strong believer is better and more beloved to Allah than the weak believer, and in both there is good. In the first episode of BRANCHES, Shaykh Irshaad Sedick sits with Ustadh Nisar Shaikh, a grappling coach from London with more than twenty years on the mat, to ask what that strength is.

They talk about the ego and being pinned by someone half your size, the objectives of sport traced back to Sayyid Muhammad ibn Alawi al-Maliki and Shaykh Seraj Hendricks, why "do not get angry" only means something once you have been provoked, the mercy that only a strong man can choose, space for Muslim sisters to train, and the physical Sunna that so many of us admire from a distance.

Ustadh Nisar Shaikh is a 3rd degree black belt with Carlson Gracie Team London, founder of Osswa Jiu-jitsu, Male Sports Coach of the Year 2024 at the Muslim Sports Awards, and the author of Prophetic Grappling, which includes Imam Suyuti's treatise on wrestling.

BRANCHES: where the tradition meets your life. Topic conversations from Isnad Academy, the companion to ROOTED.

Prophetic Grappling (Beacon Books, 2022): https://www.meccabooks.com/products/prophetic-grappling-including-as-suyuti-s-al-muxar-ah-ila-al-musar-ah

Osswa Jiu-jitsu, London: https://osswa.co.uk

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/gUpkiTgbdtQ

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Website: https://isnadacademy.com

Shaykh Nazeer Majiet only began his hifz after matric, on his father's one condition. From Shaykh Yusuf Agherdien's hifz school in Chiappini Street he went on to Darun Na'im, al-Tanzil and the Darul Uloom in Strand, then to Cairo, where he graduated from al-Azhar and sat with the mashayikh of the madyafas, among them Dr Ahmad al-Tijani. Today he heads the Arabic and Tafsir departments at the Imam Kurani Institute.

This sitting is about taking a few steps back: starting nahw and sarf again six years into his studies, the gold of Egypt that lies outside the university walls, and why a chain to the Prophet ﷺ needs a transmitted understanding as well as transmitted words.

00:00 Cold open: the isnad of understanding

00:40 Welcome to Rooted

01:35 What was I like as a teacher?

02:13 Hifz after matric: the father's condition

05:24 The oldest boy in the hifz class

06:59 Shaykh Yusuf, Chiappini Street

13:06 Pressures, parents and provision

15:01 Tajwid and the first Arabic

17:37 Darun Na'im: the year that changed everything

19:35 Arabic institute, al-Tanzil and Mawlana Saalim

24:20 The push to Strand

28:13 What Strand gives

34:45 Egypt twice, and a Madinah acceptance

46:25 Inside al-Azhar

52:06 Placement exams

59:58 Beyond the university walls

1:05:53 The madyafa and Shaykh Ahmad

1:14:46 Teaching at home

1:19:53 Favourite tafasir

1:20:35 What isnad means

1:23:17 Advice to three people

1:31:59 Closing

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/W8b2G7ewxdk

ROOTED, the full series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf_aPJtuAk9c

Read FRUITS and join the mailing list: https://isnadacademy.com/fruits

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Mawlana Hafiz Qari Saalim Peck learnt to recite the Quran from his father, completed his hifz before the late Shaykh Muhammad Yusuf Booley, read the Quran to teachers in Egypt and Syria, and graduated from Dar al-Ulum al-Arabiyyah al-Islamiyyah in Strand under Mawlana Taha Karaan. He was the first at the Cape to read the entire Quran in all seven qira'at through the Shatibiyyah. Today he is an imam of Al-Jamia Masjid on Stegman Road in Claremont, teaches the Quran to adults, and directs the Quwwa Strength Academy.

This sitting follows the Quran from his father's voice to his own heart: the teachers who heard him, Cairo and Damascus, Strand and Mawlana Taha, what the qira'at are and how al-Fatiha sounds in the readings, and what isnad means in the age of AI. Then the two of us take the first Quwwa Strength Challenge on camera, because the body that carries the Quran has a right over us.

The Quwwa Strength Challenge: Friday 30 October from Asr at Al-Jamia Masjid, Stegman Road, Claremont. Five events, a team beep test, stalls and food. Everyone is welcome.

00:00 Cold open

01:07 Introducing Mawlana Saalim

02:21 First meeting

03:17 A father's voice

06:55 Parents and hifz

13:18 Sitting before Shaykh Booley

20:31 Egypt

23:01 Syria

28:02 Strand and Mawlana Taha

36:19 What are the qira'at

43:04 Al-Fatiha in the readings

47:17 Teaching adults

53:17 Isnad in the age of AI

58:55 Kettlebells and the Quran

1:05:53 Supporting Isnad Academy

1:06:28 Why train the body

1:08:35 Challenge day: 30 October

1:10:06 Closing

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/NLmXeHoWCdk

ROOTED, the full series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf_aPJtuAk9c

Website: https://isnadacademy.com

Join our school community: https://www.skool.com/isnad-academy-7659/about

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"They charged her with assault of a soldier, and the weapon was a baby."

In the closing sitting of this series, Shaykh Irshaad Sedick and Professor Farid Esack turn to Palestine, the struggle that South African Muslims have long carried as their own.

We begin with the open letter to the people of Palestine that Prof. Esack wrote, painted along the separation wall near Ramallah. Then: why every comparison with apartheid now makes him squirm; his first visit after the first intifada, and the stone he picked up from the rubble; what South Africa's case at the International Court of Justice achieves; the campaign that ended UJ's ties with Ben-Gurion University; why some ulama stay silent; the weak hadith of the "greater jihad"; and the lessons he wants the next generation to carry. Freedom isn't free: every generation has to win it again.

CHAPTERS

0:00 Cold open

1:01 Introduction

1:56 The letter on the wall

5:29 Why the word apartheid makes him squirm

9:45 How Palestine found him

16:20 At what cost? Cancelled in Hamburg

19:36 Why South Africa took Israel to the ICJ

26:40 Is the ICJ case worth it?

32:09 Tutu, and the apartheid comparison

38:18 Campaigns: BDS and UJ's break with Ben-Gurion

47:27 Why are some ulama silent on Palestine?

57:54 The weak hadith of the greater jihad

1:01:55 Humanitarian or religious?

1:05:22 Lessons for the struggle ahead

1:14:27 Free to be Muslim in South Africa

1:17:57 Freedom isn't free

1:19:15 Close

THE SERIES

Part 1, A Child of the Jamaat: https://youtu.be/yUwcDETGtqA

Part 2, The Janaza That Shook Cape Town: https://youtu.be/GXqgARV-xTU

Watch Part 3 on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Ruh2BcWjR0g

SOURCES ON SCREEN

Letter footage: Sallie Shawl, November 2010. Desmond Tutu, "Apartheid in the Holy Land", April 2002. Hadith of the greater jihad: al-Bayhaqi, al-Zuhd al-Kabir no. 373, with a weak chain; al-Iraqi, al-Mughni 2:709. Ibn al-Qayyim, Madarij al-Salikin 3:226. Qur'an text: quran.com.

ABOUT THE GUEST

Professor Farid Esack is a South African scholar of Islam and a veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle. He served on the leadership of the Muslim Judicial Council and the Call of Islam, taught at leading universities including Harvard, headed Religion Studies at the University of Johannesburg, and in 2018 received the Order of Luthuli in Silver.

ABOUT THE HOST

Shaykh Irshaad Sedick is a Cape Town based Islamic scholar in the Shafi'i school, a hadith specialist, and the founder of Isnad Academy. He teaches full time with SeekersGuidance.

Website: https://isnadacademy.com

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Mawlana Ibrahim Gaffoor has been the imam of Masjid al-Ikhlas in Hanover Park for thirty years and taught at Dar al-Ulum al-Arabiyyah al-Islamiyyah in Strand for twenty-two, across the staff room from Mawlana Taha Karaan. His students called him Mawlana Gaff. He taught this episode's host, and he was the one who took him by the hand and showed him how to wash the dead.

This sitting is his own chain: Ante Haya and Imam Jassiem in Hanover Park, Boeta Qasim Ali's after-school madrasah, Sheikh Musa Titus, Imam Abu Bakr Simon, Sheikh Hanif Moos, Dar al-Ulum Zakariyya and Newcastle, Mawlana Qasim Sema's counsels, and what it costs to be a community's imam when nobody sees the one o'clock house calls.

00:00 Nobody sees that

00:26 Welcome: the teacher we called Mawlana Gaff

04:11 Where it began: Ante Haya, Imam Jassiem, Boeta Qasim Ali

09:45 Arabic with Imam Abu Bakr Simon; building the masjid

15:01 An engraving on a rock

18:13 Sheikh Hanif Moos, Bulugh al-Maram, Zakariyya

19:49 The urge to study: the Darul Ulum route

23:54 Mawlana Faruq Patel, the walking Quran

27:54 A piece of paper doesn't make you an alim

28:37 Mawlana Sema: this is only the key to ilm

30:45 What kind of student: Imam al-Shafi'i's six

34:05 Jalalayn, from Strand to the Haram

36:12 How he came to teach at Strand

42:42 Mawlana Taha in the staff room

48:08 Imamat: a slave of the community

52:08 Match, patch, hatch

54:55 Why underpaying scholars is dangerous

57:32 One night at one o'clock: nobody sees that

59:50 Imamat then and now; the Afrikaans-Arabic kitab

1:04:35 Mawlana Sema's three counsels; Rumi and the well

1:09:33 The Darul Ulum washes dirty clothes

1:11:02 Advice to young ulama

1:12:09 Don't wait for the eulogies; du'a for your teachers

1:16:25 Stop arguing: have your akhirah in mind

1:17:52 The close, and a kaffarah for the rain

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/p_gSHgF7io0

ROOTED, the full series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf_aPJtuAk9c

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Mawlana Khalil Hendricks left a corporate career in Johannesburg for Syria on the strength of an ayah that would not leave him alone: people who meet the angels having wronged themselves, and whose excuse is that they were made weak in the place where they were. He came back and built, with Mu'allimah Radia Bawa Hendricks, a set of institutions that now runs from a Sunday class for adults who cannot read the Qur'an to a school of 240 students.

This sitting is about what it costs to stay, and what isnad means once you stop being the student.

00:00 If you pay me a million a month

00:42 Mawlana Khalil Hendricks

02:43 A world I did not know

06:05 The first trip lands

09:01 One day I will read the Ihya in Arabic

10:03 The verse that haunted him

12:38 Syria before the war

14:47 What was lost, and what it cost

19:19 Coming back, and what had changed

21:20 Some people are so poor, the only thing they have is money

24:07 Marriage, and a new era of study

29:29 Encountering Mawlana Taha Karaan's manhaj

31:42 The scholar is the prisoner of the evidence

33:12 The counsel he kept giving

36:49 The bridging is the difficult part

40:27 Mizan, and the Qur'an without a filter

46:45 Itikaf, and the third space

52:23 InLight, and asking what they needed

1:01:56 GoodTree began at home

1:09:47 An environment steeped in kufr

1:13:46 Like an ice block in the sun

1:16:59 Sitting inside the transmission

1:18:07 Isnad is the grounding of who you are

1:21:10 Money, assets, and standing on your own

1:24:09 Let us turn every house of Allah into a school

1:25:05 AI, universities, and the value of school

1:30:11 Isnad is also what you build

1:32:55 Recognition is from Allah

HIS WORK

Mizan Institute https://mizan.co.za

GoodTree Quranic School https://goodtree.co.za

Zahraa Institute https://zahraa.co.za

InLight Foundation https://inlight.org.za

ROOTED

Every episode https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf_aPJtuAk9c

Website https://isnadacademy.com

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Podcast https://redcircle.com/shows/isnad-academy

"We resisted at a time when it was not fashionable." Everybody claims the struggle afterwards; very few were in it.

In the second sitting of this series, Shaykh Irshaad Sedick takes up the story where Part 1 left off: Farid Esack comes home from eight years in the madrasas of Karachi to a country about to catch fire. He joins the Muslim Judicial Council and drafts its constitution. He helps found the Call of Islam. He throws in his lot with the UDF — and answers the scholars of the time who said Muslims have no business in politics, and the movement men who said an alliance with non-Muslims dilutes the din.

At the centre of the episode is a story he tells here in full for the first time: the Salt River janaza of Ebrahim Carelse, a bystander shot by police in 1985. Ten thousand people marched under State of Emergency regulations, a crowd turned on a policeman, and a young mawlana threw himself over the man's body — and then had to decide whether to get up.

Then 1994, the Commission for Gender Equality, and in 2018 the Order of Luthuli — and what a boy from Bontheuwel says to himself when a president hangs a medal around his neck.

This episode contains testimony about police violence, torture and mob violence during apartheid. It is told plainly and without graphic detail, but some listeners may find it distressing.

Shaykh Irshaad and Professor Esack come from different worlds of learning and do not agree on everything. You do not have to agree with a man on everything to sit with him and honour what he has carried.

CHAPTERS

0:00 Cold open

0:55 Introduction

2:11 Coming home to a country about to catch fire

9:52 Inside the MJC, and drafting its constitution

17:28 Shaykh Nazim, and how we remember people

21:23 Were the ulama divided about politics?

33:34 "Muslims don't get involved in politics"

37:40 Was there a moment you crossed over?

41:30 Why found the Call of Islam

45:42 What did the struggle actually cost?

51:32 The Salt River janaza of Ebrahim Carelse

1:17:23 1994: Commissioner for Gender Equality

1:20:13 The Order of Luthuli, 2018

1:26:15 "I do believe that I am a miracle"

1:31:15 Why he finds it hard to make du'a

1:34:07 Closing, and what comes in Part 3

ABOUT THE GUEST

Professor Farid Esack is a South African scholar of Islam, a veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle, and one of the most widely read Muslim academic voices from this country. He served the Muslim Judicial Council, co-founded the Call of Islam, was Commissioner for Gender Equality in the democratic South Africa, and in 2018 received the Order of Luthuli in Silver.

ABOUT THE HOST

Shaykh Irshaad Sedick is a Cape Town–based Islamic scholar in the Shafi'i school, a hadith student, and the founder of Isnad Academy. He teaches full-time with SeekersGuidance.

Isnad Academy connects the global Muslim community to authenticated Islamic scholarship — live teaching, recorded courses, and conversations like this one.

#FaridEsack #IslamInSouthAfrica #IsnadAcademy #CapeTown #Apartheid #CallOfIslam #UDF #MuslimJudicialCouncil

Shaykhah Ruqayyah Samsodien flew to Damascus at eighteen and hung a sign around her neck in the dormitory that read, in bubble letters, "I don't speak English" — so that nobody would speak to her in it, and she would be forced into Arabic.

She came home an alimah.

In this episode of ROOTED, Shaykh Irshaad Sedick sits with one of the very few fully qualified female scholars in South Africa: a hafizah at thirteen, the only girl in a full-time class at a time when that was not done; a graduate of Abu al-Nur and of al-Fath University in Damascus, where she sat before Shaykh Muhammad Sa'id Ramadan al-Buti (Allah have mercy on him) and Shaykh Muhammad al-Yaqoubi; a student of Shaykh Abu al-Hasan Muhy al-Din al-Kurdi, from whom she took her ijazah in the Quran directly; and today the director of Baseerah Institute in Cape Town.

We trace the whole road: her mother's dua in 1984 for a child who would carry the Quran; the afternoon in 1996 when Shaykh Muhammad Yusuf Booley called her parents in; fifteen juz in the first year; Damascus, the dormitory, the matrons, and a wish made as a child at the grave of Abu al-Darda (Allah be pleased with him) that was answered on a cobblestone road; being called in to the Muslim Judicial Council before coming home and told not to try to change Cape Town in one go; and the Mauritanian mahdarah that now sits with her students in Arabic.

Her chain, from Al-Tanzil's Database of Sanad Holders, is drawn on screen: from Ibrahim al-Ubaydi down through the Hulwanis and Shaykhah Anisah Mayyas to her.

And the line the episode closes on, to every girl who never thought this was open to her: "But now the road is open. We have paved the way. It's now only for you to take it, in sha Allah."

ROOTED is Isnad Academy's interview series on how authentic Islamic knowledge is transmitted — teacher to student, in an unbroken chain back to the Prophet ﷺ — and why that matters in an age of unvetted online content.

▶ Join our school community: https://www.skool.com/isnad-academy-7659/about

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▶ Website: https://isnadacademy.com

CHAPTERS

0:00 Cold open — "I don't speak English"

0:26 Salam, and who she is

3:18 Shaykhah or Muallimah? The title question

5:18 Her mother's dua, 1984

5:54 The afternoon Shaykh Booley called her parents in

8:32 The only girl in a full-time class

12:25 Shaykh Muhammad Yusuf Booley

17:30 Fifteen juz, and the simplicity of that time

21:12 Damascus at eighteen — and the sign around her neck

22:52 Fusha, ammiyyah, and learning to speak

24:32 al-Fath University, and Shaykh al-Buti

31:56 Abu al-Darda and the cobblestone road

34:16 Damascus now, and what the people need

43:16 The dorm, the matrons, the discipline

45:27 "You're the only one who knows who they are"

47:30 Called in to the MJC before coming home

49:20 The ijazah, from Shaykh Muhy al-Din al-Kurdi

50:30 Jamiyyat al-Qurra and Dar al-Naim

51:20 Shaykh al-Mishri and the Mauritanian mahdarah

53:00 Baseerah Institute

56:50 What the women are studying now

59:10 Islamia, the imtihan, and the overseas option

1:02:30 What is being lost

1:07:30 Her ijazat and her shuyukh

1:09:10 The Damascus teachers

1:10:30 Sayyid Ahmad al-Kaf and the Yemeni line

1:11:30 Shaykh Hasan al-Khadim

1:14:26 Taking directly from the scholars

1:16:12 The noor that comes with it

1:20:15 To the girl who never thought she could

1:21:20 Imam Shafi'i: "he narrated to us"

1:22:30 "Now the road is open"

Terms explained on screen: hifz, huffaz, juz, ijazah, isnad, sanad, qurra, tajwid, fusha, ammiyyah, nahw, sarf, muallimah, shaykhah, alimah, mahdarah, talaqqi, takhrij, amanah ilmiyyah, and more.

Sources shown on screen: Al-Tanzil Institute, Database of Sanad Holders: Cape Town (10th print, 2021), p.62 and p.216; Imam Shafi'i's verse as given by Ibn Kathir in al-Bidaya wa al-Nihaya.

#Rooted #IsnadAcademy #Isnad #CapeTown #Damascus #Ulama #FemaleScholars #IslamicScholarship #Hifz #Ijazah #BaseerahInstitute #Syria #Mauritania