Yaqeen Podcast

"Does Islam permit a man to hit his wife?"

Islam condemns domestic violence, and a woman is never required to stay silent in the face of abuse. So how do we make sense of Quran 4:34, the verse Muslim women often wrestle with?

Yaqeen scholar Dr. Tesneem Alkiek and host Cadar Mohamud start with a key principle in the Islamic legal tradition: marriage never erased a woman’s independent legal identity. She owns property, enters contracts, and can take her husband to court when she is harmed. Dr. Alkiek explains how jurists defined that harm.

She then looks at what classical jurists actually said about physical discipline. That includes the strict limits they placed on it and how many of them advised men to avoid it entirely. The episode ends with the Prophet’s ﷺ example and what a woman should do when patience is the wrong response.

If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, please know that support is available.

For faith-sensitive counseling and emotional support, you can explore:

Khalil Center: https://khalilcenter.com
Naseeha: https://naseeha.org

As our audience spans the globe, we encourage you to seek local domestic violence support services in your country if needed. Your safety and well-being matter.

Most people believe what the people around them believe, and Muslim children are no exception. 

A child who watches a parent jump up from the dinner table because a prayer is about to pass learns that Allah is real in that house. A child who watches prayer times come and go learns something too, and eventually concludes that their parents never really believed it either.

Sh. Mohammad Elshinawy talks about how the need to belong is human nature, and that a Muslim community should put it to work for the truth instead of fighting it. The home comes first, because children form their picture of Allah largely from how their parents treat them. The masjid comes next, as the extended family most of us no longer have. Beyond it are neighbours who know you well enough to defend you.

Your children are already deciding what you believe. They are deciding it at prayer time.

0:00 - Why faith, family and fraternity
4:31 - Why children of Muslim immigrants drift from Islam
7:03 - How parents pass faith to their children
9:47 - Where children get their image of God
11:54 - The masjid as the extended family we lost
14:46 - Finding a spouse when Muslims are 1% of the country
17:21 - Why Muslims shouldn’t isolate from their neighbors
18:52 - When the neighbors defend the masjid

Sudden death is a sign of the Hour, and nearly everyone says they would choose it: to go peacefully in their sleep. The pious predecessors wanted an illness first, with time to repent, make their will, and seek forgiveness. 

When Aisha (ra) asked the Prophet ﷺ about sudden death, his answer depended on who was dying. Find out what he said in the full episode.

Dr. Omar Suleiman’s answer to a world where death arrives without warning is urgency without panic: hurry to good deeds, visit the graves, and let children witness a janazah.

For over 1,400 years, one clan has guarded the most important key in history. And ironically, it reached them through a man who once rudely denied the Prophet ﷺ entry into the Ka’bah. 

But even as his own parents vehemently opposed the Prophet ﷺ, Uthman ibn Talha (ra) inched closer to Islam. His excellent character in escorting a Muslim woman (ra) to safety, and his joining two other great Companions as they finally headed to Medina to accept Islam, became turning points in his life. 

And on the day of the Conquest of Mecca, the Prophet ﷺ honored him and his descendants with a duty that remains theirs until today. 

0:00 - His name and title of Hajib al-Ka’bah (Custodian of the Ka’bah)
2:18 - A rude comment when the Prophet ﷺ tried to enter the Ka’bah 
5:00 - How he escorted Umm Salamah (ra) to safety 
10:15 - Losing his father, uncle, and 5 brothers at Uhud 
13:21 - His mother’s vow to drink wine from a Muslim’s skull 
14:43 - Embracing Islam along with Khalid (ra) and Amr (ra)
15:58 - Receiving the keys to the Ka’bah 

You were still in your mother’s womb when all of this was already written for you by an angel: your rizq (provision), your lifespan, your deeds, and whether you will be among the blessed or wretched. 

So does it matter what you do with your life? Can you still change your destiny? What kind of plot twists might still happen at the end of an apparently good or evil life? And how deep are the risks of getting involved in bid’ah (innovations) in the religion? 

“Anchored: 40 Hadith for Today’s Muslim” is a new series by Sh. Mohammad Elshinawy which draws insights from Imam an-Nawawi (rh)’s collection of 40 hadith and applies them to some of the most pressing questions Muslims face today. 

Tune in every Saturday at 9 AM CST/3 PM GMT for a new episode of Anchored!

Episode 3 covers the 4th and 5th hadiths of Imam an-Nawawi’s collection. 

0:00 - Introduction
3:55 - The first half of Hadith 4: What’s written for you in the womb
5:42 - The first 40 days after conception: How the embryo forms
11:35 - Is there tension between Islamic teachings and modern science? 
13:03 - Ensoulment: When an embryo becomes a person 
16:24 - Can you change your destiny? 
22:59 - The second half of Hadith 4: Does destiny disregard your effort? 
26:12 - Some of your true colors surface at the moment of death 
33:31 - The 4 types of hearts 
37:09 - Hadith 5: The importance of avoiding bid’ah (innovation) 
41:48 - The definition of bid’ah (innovation)
45:01 - Reasons why bid’ah is dangerous 

Hosting guests at home has become rare. Most of us have friends we’ve known for years and never had over. We meet at cafés and restaurants, keep up in the group chat, and save our homes for some day when the house is clean and there’s time to cook. That day rarely comes.

Sh. Mohammad Elshinawy argues in this khutbah that the feast is part of the problem. When hosting means a week of cooking and a table nobody can finish, the guest feels the weight of it, the host dreads doing it again, and the invitations stop. 

The Prophet ﷺ told his Companions not to go to great lengths for guests, and they served what they had. 

Your friends came for you. A cup of tea on the floor and one extra dish is enough to keep the door open, and an open door is how friendship, and the faith that grows inside it, reaches your children.

0:00 - The perfection in every word of the Qur’an
2:41 - The first person to host guests at home 
4:13 - How we meet each other today 
5:35 - Visiting each other is an act of worship 
7:30 - How the Prophet ﷺ and Companions hosted
9:19 - It’s your guest’s rizq and your reward 
10:12 - How we made hosting a burden 
11:33 - Does keeping it simple mean you’re not generous?
13:55 - Complicating visitations breaks us apart 
16:10 - Brilliance in how Ibrahim (as) hosted angels 

"The angels curse her until morning."

Yaqeen scholar Dr. Tesneem Alkiek and host Cadar Mohamud discuss a hadith that has been used to make Muslim women feel that intimacy is a debt they owe rather than something mutually built. Dr. Alkiek reads the narration alongside the tradition's own record of a wife's sexual rights, including the case of Abu al-Darda (ra) and the men called home from campaign for their wives' sake, and explains the classical legal principle of ta'assuf fi istiʿmal al-haqq, the wrongful exercise of a legitimate right.

What happens when a wife is exhausted, postpartum, grieving, or unwell? Where does the Shariah place limits on a husband's claim, and what did the Prophet ﷺ expect of a man before he approached his wife at all?

To learn more read: Marriage and Gender Roles in Islam: Beyond Rights and Duties to learn more: https://yqn.io/57f244

0:00 The Hadith About Intimacy and the Angels’ Curse
1:02 When This Hadith Is Misused
2:45 Does a Wife Exist to Please Her Husband?
4:34 Are Women’s Sexual Needs Acknowledged in Islam?
6:30 How the Companions Protected Women’s Intimate Rights
9:35 What the Qur’an Says About Withholding Intimacy
12:08 Can a Spouse Refuse Intimacy?
12:52 Having Rights vs. Abusing Your Rights
15:04 The Prophetic Ethics of Marriage
19:16 When Hadith Is Weaponized
23:30 What Husbands and Wives Should Take From This Hadith
25:50 “Do Women Exist to Please Their Husbands?”
26:43 How Our Expectations of Marriage Have Changed
30:07 Reframing Sacrifice in Marriage
32:02 You Don’t Exist to Please Your Husband
33:25 Do Women Sacrifice More in Marriage?
37:18 Intimacy as an Act of Worship
39:21 What Does the Hadith Actually Mean?
40:22 Withholding Your Spouse’s Rights Out of Spite
42:19 Intimacy Isn’t Always Like the Movies
43:17 What Does This Look Like in a Real Marriage?
44:30 Communication, Compatibility, and Counseling
45:37 Sacrifice Should Never Mean Harm or Coercion
47:04 Rights, Ethics, and the Prophetic Vision of Marriage

NOTE: This lecture discusses Islamic teachings about the trials of the end times, including the prophecy that people will wish for death. It is a discussion of Islamic eschatology. Nothing in it is encouragement toward self-harm. 

If you are struggling with despair, hopelessness, or thoughts of harming yourself, please contact Naseeha Mental Health for free, confidential, faith-sensitive support. Call or text 1-866-627-3342 or visit https://naseeha.org. 

—

A narration says that before the Hour a man will pass a grave and say, “I wish I were in his place,” and that it will not be out of longing for Allah but out of exhaustion with life. 

The emptiness is the sign, not the hardship. What the same tradition carries is the correction: everyone already in a grave would trade everything they owned for one more day to seek Allah’s pleasure.

Dr. Omar Suleiman reflects on what is left when this world is no longer fulfilling. He is explicit that this is a religious diagnosis of one specific cause and not a statement about mental health or why anyone experiences these thoughts. 

Find out which wish for death the Prophet ﷺ forbade, which one he allowed, and the du‘a he taught in relation to this: 

اللَّهُمَّ أَحْيِنِي مَا كَانَتْ الْحَيَاةُ خَيْرًا لِي وَتَوَفَّنِي إِذَا كَانَتْ الْوَفَاةُ خَيْرًا لِي
Allahumma ahyini ma kanat al-hayatu khayran li, wa tawaffani idha kanat al-wafatu khayran li. 

“O Allah, keep me alive so long as life is good for me, and cause me to die if death is better for me.” [Sahih al-Bukhari no. 5671] 

0:00 - What’s left when nothing is fulfilling anymore
2:43 - Why disbelief in the Hereafter empties everything
3:47 - What held Ayyub (as) together
4:15 - Why are you wishing for death?
5:42 - Ibn Hajar (rh) on the paradox of wishing for death
9:47 - Fleeing a confusion you cannot correct
11:42 - What Ali (ra) said near the end of his life
15:22 - Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz (rh) and the du’a of longing
18:08 - What the dead are wishing for
19:39 - The istikhara parallel
20:14 - When a du’a becomes transgression

Abdullah ibn Sa'd ibn Abi Sarh (ra) was honored with writing the revelation down as it came to the Prophet ﷺ. Then he left Islam. 

He returned to Mecca and claimed he could tamper with or forge the Qur’an himself. It was the worst lie one could tell, and Allah (awj) responded in Surah al-An’am, ayah 93. The punishment set for him was severe, even amidst the general amnesty in the conquest of Mecca. 

Dr. Omar Suleiman traces how a man whose apostasy was answered by revelation came to command the right wing at the conquest of Egypt, replace Amr ibn al-As (ra) as its governor, and lead the first Muslim campaign west across North Africa. 

The record that survives him does not open with the apostasy. It opens with the commander, the leader of armies. Find out what he asked Allah for at the end of his life, and what he was doing at the moment he died.

0:00 - The foster brother of Uthman ibn Affan (ra)
3:59 - Leaving Islam and claiming to tamper with revelation
5:22 - Why Islamophobes misuse weak narrations about the scribes
8:29 - How he was pardoned by the Prophet ﷺ
11:20 - Leading Muslims armies across North Africa 
15:47 - The du'a to have Fajr be his last deed

Manners are not the polish on top of a religion. 

In the framework Abdullah ibn Mubarak used, faith sits inside five concentric walls. Certainty at the centre, then sincerity, then the obligations, then the prophetic practices, and manners as the outermost wall of all. The order matters, because the outermost wall is the one that gets breached first. 

Lose your adab and the sunnah starts looking optional; lose the sunnah and the obligations start slipping; lose those and whatever worship is left is self-selected, which means it was never very sincere; and at the end of that sequence a person’s certainty is gone. Nobody experiences this as a collapse. It happens inward, in order, over years.

The practical edge of all this is uncomfortable, and Sh. Mohammad Elshinawy lands it hard at the end. Islam was built on five pillars, which makes those pillars infrastructure rather than decoration. Everything else is finishing work, and finishing work on a structure in shambles is not piety. It is decor.

“Anchored: 40 Hadith for Today’s Muslim” is a new series by Sh. Mohammad Elshinawy which draws insights from Imam an-Nawawi (rh)’s collection of 40 hadith and applies them to some of the most pressing questions Muslims face today. 

Tune in every Saturday at 9 AM CST/3 PM GMT for a new episode of Anchored!

Episode 2 covers the second and third hadiths of Imam an-Nawawi’s collection. 

0:00 - 4 essential questions: The hadith of Jibril (as) 
6:57 - Why the Prophet ﷺ rarely gave long lectures
9:30 - 5 fortresses of faith and adab (manners) as the outer fortress  
12:56 - The baseline faith of a Muslim
18:22 - Questions about qadr (destiny)
21:18 - How Islam addresses loneliness 
23:52 - The pattern in Yaqeen’s Ramadan series 
26:58 - Disrespectful children: Don’t become a sign of the Hour 
29:57 - Competing in tall buildings: Turning opportunity into vanity? 
34:33 - What the word “deen” really means 
36:05 - The 5 pillars of Islam