Nouman Ali Khan is quite popular among the moderate salafis and "orthodox sunnis" in the West, and there's a reason for that. First of all, he comes off as a "knowledgeable" and "humble" individual, who really
gets Islam. No, he
really gets Islam and what it's about. He focuses solely on the Quran and just immerses himself in the understanding of the word of allah all-mighty all-high. He can spend an entire lecture going through one or two verses, and at the end he's like "oh, and this is just scratching on the surface, there is so much more I don't even know or understand yet". This gives the impression not only that the Quran is so great because he spent an entire hour for one verse, but that it's even greater than we can imagine because there is so much more to learn still from this single verse! People like drama.
Secondly, he usually keeps his disgusting Islamic views "hidden", and only on occasions vents them to other like-minded. Especially in front of non-Muslims, he comes off as this super moderate and rational individual. Muslims like that, they like someone they can show off and say "seeeee, we're not so bad with our death for apostasy and stoning and whatnot"
Also, Muslims with a conscience don't like to be reminded of all the nasty things they ignore about their religion, so he's perfect to turn to for a little bit of imaan-boost
Anyway, what I would say Nouman Ali Khan is gifted with, is the gift of bullshitting. He can take one opinion or argument, like Jedi said which should only take like 30 seconds to explain, but turns it into this whole speech which makes people think he actually
knows shit. He doesn't. Be critical, don't have any biases when you listen to him, and just analyze what he is really saying. It's bullshit every last bit of it. He makes it fancy by giving "linguistic" definitions and explanations, but as a linguist, I can say that there is no one true "essence" or meaning in language. Language changes, the semantics in
particular is continuously changing. To be honest, irregardless of how many books and encyclopedias has been written on "Quranic Arabic", there is no way we can understand it 100 %. Don't forget that the Quran is a literary work, and with every other single literary work, we never know the "true" intent of the author. And especially with these neo-moderate-"orthodox"-sunnis-"we believe in true Islam" peeps who have started to pop up lately with their mutawatir claims so that we-can-do-away-with-some-of-the-nasty-uncomfortable Islamic beliefs, mutawatir hadeeth are not nearly enough to even understand the basics (if we're going down that road with Mo being the "mufassir"). Even with all the ahaad hadeeth... well, there's a reason for the plethora of Quranic interpretations even within the same sects...
Even during Mo's time, first class sahaba didn't know what different verses meant, because their Arabic skills were lacking. I remember a narration where a first class sahaba admitted that until then, he hadn't understood this and this verse until a Bedouin had used that particular verb in a sentence and given him context and understanding of the word (I wish I had the motivation to go and look it up so that you can have the narration in its entirety, but I don't
I don't even remember the verse, maybe some of our CEMB scholars knows which verse I'm talking about
). What I wanted to say is, this is just a confirmation of what we know; language change happens in real time. Then what are you going to say about a language that isn't even spoken today, which was a particular Arabic dialect of a people that lived 1400 years ago. It's so stupid that I don't even want to go on about it...
Urrghh. I feel like this is turning into a incoherent text. I'll stop here.
Topic: Nouman Ali Khan