The founder and principal of As-Suffa Institute & Outreach, Shaykh Zahir was born and raised in the United Kingdom. After formal school studies, he began his journey of studying the sacred sciences at Darul Uloom, Bury culminating with an ijaazah (certificate) to teach from Darul Uloom, Newcastle, South Africa.
With an enthusing spirit and vision for the progress of the Deen in the UK, the Shaykh returned and took on the role of the Khateeb for Jami Masjid, one of the largest in Birmingham, whilst studying for a BA in Islamic Theology from Birmingham University.
Through the lens of concern for the community and with an understanding of their culture and needs, he founded As-Suffa Institute which today, by the grace of Allah, caters the full time and part time Alimiyyah course, Islamic Studies diplomas, post-graduate courses, modular sciences, youth facilities and regular weekend courses. As-Suffa Outreach which began in 2015 was borne from the aspiration to act upon the Sunnah of the Prophet (peace be upon Him) in its totality, by serving each member of the community, in particular those who are the most vulnerable. Today the outreach branch has a Homeless Project, Foodbank, Mental Health Clinics, Domestic Violence Counselling, Legal Advice Help and local and national zakat distribution.
Shaykh Zahir is an internationally renowned speaker and has travelled extensively, from Barbados to Malaysia, with the objective of reviving the hearts with Islamic knowledge. His development of the Islamic History series, looking at the late and recent Muslim narrative in a revolutionary depth in the English language, illustrates the latest mark of his role as teacher, preacher and activist through his unique delivery style and candour.
Islam21c Articulating Islam in the 21st Century
That social media comment by salamn is inccorect.
When Salman said that in a hundred years fiqh councils will have prohibited social media and wondered why people haven’t realized it’s problems before I cringed. That is idealism beyond any type of realistic scope. In a hundred years technology will be so ingrained in their lives that it would be incomprehensible to them to change. Heck we don’t need to look in the far off future, go look at present day. Every single person has social media and uses the internet for many hours each day. Young adults and teens have grown up with phones, laptops and Instagram and it is impossible to expect they would even be receptive to talk of it being haram, let alone actually boycott it. We can easily look to the example of TV in the recent past scholars would forbid it, and at least some people would listen. Now a days everyone has Netflix or TV, and majority of scholars either don’t prohibit Tv or if they’re in the minority do not openly condemn it. Why? It’s because it is not practical to cut off TV, and the reality if one were to try they would be laughed at or not taken seriously.
As Muslims we need to advocate for Smart Social Media Use, where we don’t let it control all our time and thoughts. We need to be measured especially with the way this subject is approached and we need to develop strategies where we can teach moderation and it’s importance to kids. Trying to just go don’t use social media use is a fantasy, and expecting people who have grown up with it to take heed won’t ever work. So we need to be smart and approach this with care.
I agree with everything written in this comment. I did mention that we’ve never had a TV in our home, but having said that, we did allow our children to watch particular programmes over the internet. This way, we could ensure that the children mainly watched whatever I saved in the favourites. This helped us moderate how much TV they were watching as it’s harder to go from programme to programme when you’ve only got a few saved websites. This meant that once the children had finished watching the latest episode of whatever programme it was, they got up and DID something else. The other thing that we worried about was the inappropriate advertisements that can come unexpectedly on TV but weren’t an issue with programmes on the internet.
As for prohibiting TV completely, I only know 1 or 2 sisters who would probably agree to this but that’s because they really believe that the hadith about the image makers being in Hell can be linked to video images. Most people who don’t follow that opinion would probably agree that being smart is the right approach to these different communication technologies rather than an outright ban.