Today, I had the honor of a lifetime: I picked up Mufti Taqi Usmani from his hotel (he’s here for the Islamic Fiqh Academy sessions this week in Amman) and took him to visit Shaykh Nuh Keller at the latter’s house in Kharabsheh.

It was a beautiful meeting of two great luminaries of our times. An important issue raised and agreed upon by both scholars was the importance of considerations of tazkiya (spiritual benefit) when one answers religious questions. The point of religion is to promote deen in the lives of people, which is why the fuqaha deemed systematically seeking out dispensations to be impermissible, and why they encouraged people to follow one school of law.

(As an aside, please make dua for Mufti Taqi: he got a bit sick in the afternoon, and we’re now cooking Pakistani food for him over the upcoming days, instead of the hotel stuff he preferred to avoid.)