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Isnad Academy Podcast

by Irshaad Sedick

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Latest episodes

"Mommy, Please, I Don't Want to Stop" | Dr Hajir Bawa | ROOTED Ep. 14

October 23, 2026 · 47 min

Her daughter was seven and ten juz into her hifz when Dr Hajir Bawa asked her to pause. Radia broke down: "Mommy, please, I don't want to stop. I want to be like our Nabi." Dr Hajir Bawa was born in District Six, married at sixteen, and…
"The Mats Are Honest" | Ustadh Nisar Shaikh | BRANCHES Ep. 1

October 20, 2026 · 1 hr 4 min

The Prophet, Allah bless him and give him peace, said that the strong believer is better and more beloved to Allah than the weak believer, and in both there is good. In the first episode of BRANCHES, Shaykh Irshaad Sedick sits with Ustadh…
"A Few Steps Back" | Shaykh Nazeer Majiet | ROOTED Ep. 13

October 16, 2026 · 1 hr 33 min

Shaykh Nazeer Majiet only began his hifz after matric, on his father's one condition. From Shaykh Yusuf Agherdien's hifz school in Chiappini Street he went on to Darun Na'im, al-Tanzil and the Darul Uloom in Strand, then to Cairo, where he…
"From Mouth to Heart" | Mawlana Saalim Peck | ROOTED Ep. 12

October 10, 2026 · 1 hr 12 min

Mawlana Hafiz Qari Saalim Peck learnt to recite the Quran from his father, completed his hifz before the late Shaykh Muhammad Yusuf Booley, read the Quran to teachers in Egypt and Syria, and graduated from Dar al-Ulum al-Arabiyyah…
"The Weapon Was a Baby" | Prof. Farid Esack on Palestine and South Africa (Part 3)

October 7, 2026 · 1 hr 20 min

"They charged her with assault of a soldier, and the weapon was a baby." In the closing sitting of this series, Shaykh Irshaad Sedick and Professor Farid Esack turn to Palestine, the struggle that South African Muslims have long carried…

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"Nobody Sees That" | Mawlana Ibrahim Gaffoor | ROOTED Ep. 11

October 7, 2026 · 1 hr 21 min

Mawlana Ibrahim Gaffoor has been the imam of Masjid al-Ikhlas in Hanover Park for thirty years and taught at Dar al-Ulum al-Arabiyyah al-Islamiyyah in Strand for twenty-two, across the staff room from Mawlana Taha Karaan. His students…
"If You Pay Me A Million A Month, I Won't Stay" | Mawlana Khalil Hendricks | ROOTED Ep. 10

September 25, 2026 · 1 hr 34 min

Mawlana Khalil Hendricks left a corporate career in Johannesburg for Syria on the strength of an ayah that would not leave him alone: people who meet the angels having wronged themselves, and whose excuse is that they were made weak in the…
"We Resisted When It Wasn't Fashionable" | Prof. Farid Esack on the Struggle Years (Part 2)

September 21, 2026 · 1 hr 35 min

"We resisted at a time when it was not fashionable." Everybody claims the struggle afterwards; very few were in it. In the second sitting of this series, Shaykh Irshaad Sedick takes up the story where Part 1 left off: Farid Esack comes…
She Qualified in Damascus Through Dua | Shaykhah Ruqayyah Samsodien | Rooted Ep 9

September 18, 2026 · 1 hr 23 min

Shaykhah Ruqayyah Samsodien flew to Damascus at eighteen and hung a sign around her neck in the dormitory that read, in bubble letters, "I don't speak English" — so that nobody would speak to her in it, and she would be forced into…
One of the Shortest Chains to Sahih al-Bukhari in the World | Mawlana Ashraf Lamara | Rooted Ep. 8

September 11, 2026 · 1 hr 0 min

Mawlana Ashraf Lamara holds one of the shortest chains of transmission to Sahih al-Bukhari in the world — four links to Shah Waliullah al-Dihlawi — and until last year almost nobody outside a handful of scholars knew it. In this episode…
“You Don’t Worship the Teacher” | Mawlana Zakariyah Philander | ROOTED Ep. 7

September 4, 2026 · 1 hr 56 min

When I was eleven years old, I walked into an afternoon madrasa in Retreat, and the man at the front of that room was the first qualified Islamic scholar I ever had as a teacher. He is the reason I wanted to become an alim. He is the…
A Child of the Jamaat | Prof. Farid Esack on Being a Muslim in South Africa (Part 1)

September 4, 2026 · 1 hr 11 min

Long before he was a professor, before the struggle, before the academy — Farid Esack was a boy in Bontheuwel raised by a single mother, and a child of the Tablighi Jamaat. In this first sitting of a new series from Isnad Academy, Shaykh…

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About the show

Authentic knowledge from authentic sources. In an age when anyone can record a video and call themselves a scholar, Islam has never been carried that way. It moves from teacher to student, across generations, back to the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace). That chain has a name: isnad. Hosted by Shaykh Irshaad Sedick in Cape Town, this podcast is built on that principle. ROOTED, the flagship interview series, sits with the scholars of South Africa who went to the source and came home, and asks what it cost them to get there. Alongside it, Studio Chats brings single conversations on whatever the moment asks of us, from Qurbani to Gaza to the state of Islamic education. The Ramadan series, Unlocking Hearts, I Am Near, Tafakkur and Understanding Juz Amma, are kept complete so they can be followed from the first day. More than 175 episodes since 2021. Every episode, with chapter markers and full notes: isnadacademy.com/podcast