Transcript | October 2021

One of my teachers* (Allah preserve him and his family) summarised a few incidents from the following interview. His summary is transcribed below. Please note that my teacher recounted this in a story-telling style, with students smiling and laughing at relevant junctures. It is not a direct translation of the original interview.

Any mistakes are mine alone.

*Without naming him, he is well-known for his work in Hadith and other sciences.

An interview with الشيخ الدكتور محمد أحمد معبد عبد الكريم

Incident 1 - Falafel and Ibn Khaldun

I’m listening to him speak about his educational journey and it is so fascinating. He is one of the leading hadith scholars at al-Azhar right now, if not the leading hadith scholar. He was explaining about his days when he was studying at al-Azhar, as a young adult growing up in Egypt. He says that he had so much desire for books that he would try to buy these books whenever he got an opportunity.

There were a group of friends who would meet every Thursday night just to hang out. They were his social friends, not his ‘ilmi friends. He said that he spent time with his ‘ilmi friends, but for his social friends, he would just kick back and have fun with them. So, one particular Thursday night, they all meet up. It was kind of like a putlock where one person has to go and get the food. Everyone chips in the money but one person is assigned the responsibility of going to the store and buying it.

This particular Thursday, it was his turn. So they all put in some money to buy khushari, it’s kind of like our street food, like Subway or something like that. He has to get enough for everybody. They all put in like a quarter, fifty cents, and eventually it reaches 2 gunay. They have enough to buy enough khushari for all of them. This is back in the 80’s or 90’s. So he goes to the store and he notices that the person who is dishing out the khushari doesn’t have any plastic bags to put it in, or doesn’t have a bowl. So he’s putting some of the stuff inside foil or whatever he had, but there wasn’t enough paper or wrap to put everything together. He had a book next to him and what he would do is, he would open the book, tear out a piece of paper, put the falafel or whatever inside it, wrap it up and give it to his customers. So Shaykh Ahmed Ma’bed is waiting in line and he’s like, what is this guy doing? Absolute jaahil, does not understand the value of what is in front of him…

So Shaykh Ahmed Ma’bed goes to the front and is about to order the food, so the person takes the rice and puts it in the foil. He was about to tear out a piece of paper from the book and put the falafel and whatever extra inside and give it to him, and he told him, ‘Stop! Let me see what that book is.’ He thought it was like the Yellow pages or something — go ahead, put as much khusahri inside it as you want! laughs

But he opens it and it turns out it is the Muqaddimah of Ibn Khaldun.

He got so upset and told him what are you doing, why are you ripping out— … and he told him look, I don’t know what you’re talking about, this is just a book I found lying in my son’s library. I don’t have enough money to buy special wrap so I thought let me rip out pages from this and put it together. So Shaykh Ahmed Ma’bed got so upset and said how much would you sell the book for? He’s like, 2 gunay.

Now, that’s a really good deal. You buy those books for 15, 20 gunay. The Shaykh had a great desire for books. So he starts counting the money he has and he’s like, oh man, I only have two gunay — so it’s either the khushari or the muqaddimah of Ibn Khaldun.

It was a tough decision so he went ahead, gave him the money and took the Muqadimmah of Ibn Khaldun.

So he came back to his friends and they said listen, Hasan al-Basri or Junayd Baghdady, we can’t eat a muqadimmah ibn khaldun….! These guys aren’t even the ‘ilmi lot of his friends who would appreciate what he’s doing. They start screaming at him and saying he has to make up for it next week. The way it works, the food places were far, so whoever had to walk had to walk quite far. So the next week, they tell him, okay, second shot, go and get the khushari or whatever food it was. They pool in their money and get together about 2 gunay again and give it to him. He sets off to go and get dinner for everyone. He goes to the same store, he’s waiting in line, and lo and behold this guy has another book on his counter. When he’s giving people food, he just rips out a sheet of paper, he fills it up and gives it to the customer. Now he gets to the front of the line again and he says, ya ‘ammo, why are you doing this to these books. He says I’m poor, I don’t have money, my son is not reading these books anyway…. My son is not even using these books, I don’t have money, so why don’t I just use it? He opens the book again and this time it was Hashiyat Al Qalyubi a book on Shafi’i fiqh. So he’s like oh man, tough decisions. What do I do. He asks him okay how much are you selling this for? He’s like 2 gunay. Oh man. He’s thinking either I flop on the khushari again, or I— It’s kind of like when you see an endangered animal and you know they’re about to go extinct because of some reckless hunter… So he says, For the second time, I gave him the two gunay, I got the book instead of the khushari, I come back and let’s just say I never had any more friends after that.

Incident 2 - The missing PhD thesis

The interviewer asked him about his PhD thesis. Completing a PhD takes three to five years. Back then, there were no scanners or printers. Everything you did, you did on a typewriter. He was explaining how— Anyone who has done grad research knows that you are also an assistant professor and help teach certain classes. So when he completed writing his dissertation, he was appointed to oversee one of the undergraduate exams. When he comes into the hall, he brings his dissertation with him, just so he can go over it. He’s about to submit it in a few weeks. It was in a bag. But in that bag also was kind of, I believe, the ‘cheat sheet’ for some other exams he was preparing. There was something very important related to the exams.

He’s the invigilator so he’s walking back and forth, and one by one, students are submitting their papers and leaving. He says by the time everyone is done, he comes back to his seat and that whole bag is missing. He’s upset for two reasons (1) Someone is cheating and took all the answers to another exam, and (2) More importantly, his risaalah is gone! He did some thinking and figured out who it had to have been. He kept an eye on most of the students and figured out which student it was. By asking other people a few questions, he found out this person was not the most pious guy. He confronted the student and the student continued to refuse and refuse, saying you have no evidence…. Supposedly he stole work and material from other people, too. Ultimately, he didn’t get it back, so he went to his supervisor and asked him, is there anything we can do about it?

His supervisor said: لا أنا ولا أنت —

Forget about you, I can’t even do anything!

Best case scenario, somehow it pops up and you’re able to show it to me…

He’s heartbroken, what is he going to do? Eventually, he goes to the university and tells them what happened. They cut him no slack. He had to do the entire dissertation again, which took him 3 years. Not only did it take him 3 years, but they penalised him because you’re only allowed 5 years to do it, and he lost his thesis in his 4th year. He had to do the whole thing again.

SubhanAllah, the thing is, I didn’t know this story. I only found out 6 minutes ago. I’ve actually read his book. He published his dissertation. I read it 5 or 6 years ago and wAllahi I thought to myself, you could not have written a book like this unless you had computer programmes. It turns out, he wrote this in the 80’s, and it’s the second time he wrote it because the first copy got lost.

It got me thinking about a number of things but one of them was the value of time. Imagine, three years of your life…. and you have to do them all over again.

End quote

May Allah preserve the teacher for relaying this account, and Shaykh Ahmed Ma’bed for his resilience and efforts.

Hearing this account, it seemed to me that the Shaykh could not stomach the sight (Incident 1). Seeing the book’s pages being ripped out like that, food placed inside them as if the book was nothing but newspaper… It was intolerable.

Hunger may also be intolerable to a person. So is loneliness.

It was his ihtiram (sense of reverence and respect)..... for the ulema, for ilm, for the dīn..... He couldn't stomach the sight. It was intolerable. More intolerable than hunger. More intolerable than losing friends.
Allah has certainly honoured him and raised his rank in turn. He is one of the foremost scholars of Hadith at al-Azhar.

May we always respect our teachers and the ulema, against our own comforts, and make this lack of ihtiram the one thing we cannot tolerate for ourselves.