AbdelRahman Murphy – Thirty & Up Treasury Of Imam Al-Ghazali Class 7
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AI: Transcript ©
Okay, assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.
Bismillah, bismillah walhamdulillah, wassalatu wassalamu ala rasulillah wa
ala alihi wa ashabihi ajma'in.
Welcome home everybody, it's good to see you
alhamdulillah.
We are, maghrib time has been sliding up,
alhamdulillah, consistently, which is good for us 30
and up people because that means that isha
is going to be earlier and we can
sleep earlier, inshallah.
No, I'm joking around a little bit, but,
so we're going to get right into it,
inshallah.
Also, tonight's topic is a little bit different.
The approach that Dr. Mustafa, he took in
this passage is a little bit, just a
slight difference from the previous one.
So this is the seventh passage from a
book called Kunuz Min Al-Ghazali, The Treasures
of Al-Ghazali, and this is a text
in which Dr. Mustafa Abu Suway gathered some
passages from the works of Imam Al-Ghazali
that he found to be very important and
critical and inspiring.
And so, the first few, you know, we
talked about the first six so far, alhamdulillah,
we talked about things like sincerity, we talked
about things like understanding the value of not
being consumed by materialists, you know, consumerism, we
talked about all these different kind of large
spiritual topics.
This one he calls, it doesn't sound very
exciting, but I'll re-frame it a little
bit.
It's called Deconstructing Greek Metaphysics.
Now, if you want to get up and
leave, don't, okay?
This needs a little bit of context, okay?
Imam Al-Ghazali, rahimahullah, he lived about a
thousand years ago, and he lived in what
many consider to be one of the golden
eras of Islamic intellectual thought, okay?
So, he was in the center of Islamic
education in Baghdad.
He was the premier scholar of his time
in terms of Islamic law and, you know,
theology and spirituality.
So, he was, mashallah, very just aligned, in
tune, and the proof of that is that
we're reading his works today.
A thousand years later, we still read his
words, you know?
How many of us, subhanallah, we have confidence
that our wisdoms are even going to be
remembered a thousand years from now, let alone
studied in large gatherings across the world.
So, there's no doubt that he was somebody
that was a genius, okay?
Now, what was happening at the time was
that there were other prevailing ideologies and beliefs,
other isms, okay?
That were engaging for the first time ever
with the Muslim thought community, with Muslim scholars,
Muslim, you know, individuals, right?
Whether they be lay people or scholars themselves.
And so, Imam al-Ghazali, one of the
things that he did, one of the missions
that he took upon himself, was that he
wanted to, in his best effort, he wanted
to protect and fortify and really solidify, like
build a fortress around the belief of every
single Muslim to protect that belief from being
corrupted and being infiltrated by some of these
unfortunate ideologies that were around, okay?
So, to be very direct and blunt, this
was the first time that Muslims were engaging
in Arabic, right?
In Farsi, in Persian, in the languages that
they understood with some of these different thought
patterns that people were having.
What's the purpose of our existence?
What makes us happy?
What makes us human?
All of these questions that we now, really
in America, are so used to being heard,
right?
We're used to these questions.
What is the purpose of life?
What is the purpose of my existence?
So, our civilization here in the West was
built upon these very Greek metaphysical principles.
We're used to this stuff, right?
Whether it be our legal system or whether
it be our philosophical system.
This is stuff that we've heard.
But for the first time ever, the Muslims
are hearing this.
And Imam Ghazali, he says, I'm going to
go ahead and I'm going to dedicate my
life to try to engage with and disprove
some of these really problematic thoughts, okay?
I'll give you an example of how some
of this can be really, really problematic, okay?
So, one of them, and I did this
in my undergrad.
I was a double major.
I did English education and religious studies with
a concentration actually in philosophy.
So, when I read this, I remember reading
some of the Muslim authors that were influenced
by this stuff.
And I'm sitting in the college classroom.
So, they're reading these books like in a
celebratory way.
Look at how enlightened these Muslims became once
they read the works of Plato and of
Socrates.
Look at how much smarter they became.
Because the West has always seen the East
as being inherently less intelligent, right?
Whether it be the Middle East, whether it
be Africa, whether it be Asia.
They've always seen them as being less sophisticated,
less intelligent.
Although now, when you look at what's being
sold at Whole Foods, it's all Eastern stuff,
right?
You're cool now if you know falafel and
hummus and if you do Asian healing and
if you do the, you know, tribal.
Everything is cool now.
But back then, and even to some degree
now, it's seen as less sophisticated, less complex,
less engaging with the real world.
So, Imam al-Ghazali, rahimahullah, he went and
he deconstructed some of these erroneous ideas, okay?
One of them that made its way till
today, right?
We struggle with this till today, is who
is more important ultimately, right?
The human being or the deity, the creator
or the creation?
Who's more important?
And if you looked at the secular ideal,
which was built upon this foundation of Greek
metaphysics, what you'll find is that all authors
that were raised from the soil tried to
put forth and propose this idea that the
human being is sacred and not sacred in
the way that Islam says, إِنَّ أَكْرُمَكُمْ عِنْدَ
اللَّهِ أَتْخَاقُمْ that Allah says that your sanctity
is tied to your taqwa.
No, we are sacred based on the fact
that we, for example, have wants and desires
and our truth is more important than the
revelation that Allah Ta'ala has sent to
us and that how we feel it trumps
and it conquers any guidance that Allah has
sent, right?
And this is sort of like the bubbling
up of these things.
So, Imam al-Ghazali, rahimahullah, he spent his
time deconstructing these ideas and he wrote many
texts, many books that successfully really deconstructed some
of these things.
But I want to read to you this
passage because that's not what we're going to
be doing tonight.
What we're going to be doing tonight is
we're going to talk about this passage that
Dr. Mustafa chose is a passage that shows
you the wisdom of Imam al-Ghazali in
the middle of this battle, okay?
Let's say, for example, that atheism is, you
know, one of the great challenges that the
Muslims face today as well as every faith
tradition, but the Muslims are facing today, right?
It's no secret, like it's not like a...
it's more like a public secret.
Every Muslim family, right, to some degree in
America has a story, a relative, maybe even
some of us in this room went through
a period of questioning belief, something that's very
common for a lot of people.
And it could be because of maybe an
improper educational process when we were younger.
It could be because maybe there is some
sort of traumatic event or it could be
because intellectually we were never satisfied by the
Islamic tradition because we didn't engage with it
in the right way, okay?
It's like saying I don't believe in math
because I had a bad teacher.
There are students that grow up, I was
one of them.
How many of you think you're bad at
math?
Okay, how many of you later in life
found out you're actually pretty good at math?
You just had a bad teacher, right?
It happens all the time.
You have a teacher in elementary school, middle
school that kind of makes you believe you're
bad at something and then later on in
life you're like actually I'm not bad at
this.
I just had a teacher that imparted this
to me the incorrect way.
Okay, so that happens with religion too unfortunately.
May Allah protect us.
So Imam Ghazali, okay, he in this moment
of his life as he's battling these isms,
right, the atheism, the secularism, this, this, this,
he looks at his community, he turns around
and he looks at his community and despite
popular belief not everybody in the Muslim community
agreed with each other on every topic.
Have you guys experienced this?
Do all Muslims agree on everything?
Do we pray a little bit differently sometimes?
Have you guys looked and seen some people
praying with their hands here and some here?
Have you seen some people wearing different styles
of clothing, different methods of performing their salah,
different rulings, right?
What madhab do you follow?
What this is?
Have you guys heard these phrases before?
Okay, and now many of us we interpret
these differences as being a source of weakness
but actually that's not the case.
The different legal schools, the different opinions, the
different interpretations of the texts are not and
have never been a weakness in the Islamic
tradition.
They've always been seen as a strength, subhanallah,
because what you have is you have a
variety of genius readings of the same source
material that arrives at different conclusions legally so
that some people say for example that this
is allowed or this is not allowed or
this is when it's allowed and this is
when it's not allowed, etc.
And all of those variants in rulings allow
for different kinds of Muslims to exist.
For example, when it comes to what you
can make wudu with water-wise, one of
my teachers taught us this early.
He said when it comes to what you
can make wudu with water-wise, right?
What kind of water is suitable for making
wudu?
There's different opinions, okay?
And he was saying if there was only
one opinion, it would be very challenging, it
would be very difficult for the people, maybe
not of the rainforest because those people have
an abundance of water.
But what about the people of the desert,
the people who have scarcity in water?
Where would they be able to find a
ruling that fit their condition?
And so you have legal schools that developed
in different eras, with different realities, with different
social constraints that allowed for different rulings to
take place that gave different cultures and people
in different times the ability to practice Islam
beautifully.
So we never see this as a weakness.
But let's be honest, there's some fighting sometimes,
right?
When is Ramadan?
When is Eid?
Have you guys ever prayed Eid on a
different day than your family sometimes?
The moon sighting versus calculation.
You guys, am I not triggering anybody?
There was a story, there was someone that
was telling me, you know, on Friday I
was talking to them and they said, yeah,
we pray to Eid and we called our
family in an unnamed city, right?
It is the fourth holiest city in the
world, Chicago.
But they called and they said, hey, Eid
Mubarak.
And they said, what do you mean?
It's the last day of Ramadan, we're fasting.
And so again, sometimes these differences, they're not
always sweet.
Sometimes they are bitter.
And they're not always fun.
Sometimes they do lead to people disagreeing vehemently.
But this is where we see Imam Ghazali's
genius.
As he's fighting this fire on the outside,
he looks to the people on the inside
and he writes this passage.
Okay, so now that I give you the
context, let's read it.
He says, let it be known that the
purpose of those who warn against the philosophers,
philosophers here is the group of people that
are attacking Islamic belief from the outside, right?
The atheists, the isms, etc.
He says, they consider their methods to be
flawless.
Meaning what?
They think that their arguments are perfect, airtight,
right?
You watch your Neil deGrasse Tyson videos.
You look at Bill Maher.
You look at all these talking heads that
have subscribed.
Their religion is they believe, la ilaha illa
ana.
There's no God except for me, right?
And they've identified this as being their deity.
May Allah protect us.
So he says, they think that their argument
is flawless, airtight.
He says, and they start to give proofs,
but he says their proofs only display their
incoherence.
When you look at their proofs, when you
look at it, and you deconstruct step by
step, you see their incoherence.
He says, this is why my objection to
their view is by demanding more proofs from
them.
He basically says, keep talking.
Because the more you talk, the more you
show and you explain your own incoherence.
And he says, I never ever feel the
need to prove my religion.
I never ever go to them and say,
no, no, no, you're wrong because of it.
No, he says, no, I look at their
argument and I deconstruct them one at a
time.
Thus, I refute what they believe and I
do this categorically through different compelling methods of
their proofs.
Now listen, this is amazing.
And he says, and I do this sometimes
using the method of different schools within my
community that I disagree with.
Let me repeat that.
I disagree with them on the outside and
I utilize the strategies of the different schools
inside my community that I don't agree with.
He's like, I'm from the Shafi'i school.
But I'll use a Hanafi style to disagree
with those guys.
Even though after my fight with them is
over, I'm going to have an argument with
these guys.
Because we don't agree on everything.
But what's he saying?
He's saying, when it comes to preserving Islam,
there is a sequence and an order in
how we agree and how we disagree.
When it comes to understanding what is at
stake, right?
It's not a matter of should I pray
with my hands here or here or here.
It's a matter of do I believe in
Allah?
And he says, if the question is existential
in nature, we no longer have differences on
the inside.
We no longer have differences.
But if the question is about the finer
points, how do we do something, what time
is Asr by the way?
Is it this time or is it 45
minutes later?
Is it one shadow or double shadow?
All of those arguments, if it comes to
whether or not this is a question of
believing in Allah and his messenger, all of
those arguments, we hit the pause button.
And we all turn around together and we
unite, we lock arms and we look outward
and we say, our effort is to protect
this deen, not about the finer arguments right
now.
So he says, I will use the compelling
arguments of some different schools.
And in the process, I will not defend
any particular group.
I will not say that my way or
their way or so is better.
And I will use them all against the
philosophers.
For all of us, Muslims, we differ on
groups that are matters of details.
But the philosophers attack the very principle of
our religion.
Let us, therefore, unite against them.
Because when the hardships attack us, grudges should
disappear.
Subhanallah.
I mean, if we, you know, when you
talk about unity, Imam Ghazali, again a thousand
years ago, this is why we say, Rahimahullah,
may Allah have mercy on him.
How, how present is this advice today?
How present is this advice today?
You know, tragedy is tragedy.
There is no way to dress up tragedy.
You can't, like, you cannot take a moment
that is absolutely heartbreaking and make it look
any better.
But one of the wisdoms of Allah is
that anything bad that happens, amongst the challenge,
there is always something to learn.
And one of the things that we learned
in particular, and we can find this in
a tragedy, for example, like the affliction of
our brothers and sisters in Gaza, is that
a lot of the infighting that was happening
in the community about really petty things, it
melted away when the focus became singular, when
the focus became unified, when it became, in
a way, when it became ummah-centric.
This is not about whether this or that
or any, no.
This is about the existence of our ummah
and our brothers and sisters.
So let me read now to you Imam
Ghazali's analysis by the one who knows him
best in our era, Dr. Mustafa Abu Suay.
He says, Imam Ghazali responds to the challenges
of his age.
These challenges came from three sources.
Number one, he said, Greek philosophy.
These were the people that were trying to
come in and undo and untie the knots
of faith.
You know, when you build a tent and
you have to anchor that tent and you
take the pegs.
By the way, if anyone here has ever
successfully built a tent, may Allah bless you.
For those of us, we just kind of
like figure it out and see what's happening.
Why are there extra pieces?
Uh-oh, you know, something's wrong.
But when you build a tent, or so
I hear, in theory, successfully, you have these
pegs that you anchor into the ground and
you affix this rope to them so that
it's very tight.
And that is so that the structure is
safe and the structure is sound.
No wind, no rain, no physical structure can
knock this thing over within reason.
It keeps you safe.
So, the Greek philosophers of the time of
Ghazali were trying to undo the pegs, untie
the knots, pull them out of the ground.
They were trying to attack the very structure
of Islam.
Then he said the second group were the
deviant theological trends within the Muslims.
So people who were making mistakes internally, they
were saying certain things, and again, this is
probably not the venue for that, but they
were having certain, and a lot of them
were influenced by the Greek philosophers, but nonetheless,
they were saying certain things that were not
existentially problematic, but they were just inaccurate.
They were just wrong.
Things that, again, really, it's not affecting the
everyday Muslim.
It's not affecting us.
And then he said, and the other was
the lack of spirituality and the lack of
sincerity.
So, remember we talked about the first six
weeks of this.
Those are really the topics he dealt with,
spirituality and sincerity.
So then, Dr. Mustafa says, one can say
that throughout the history of the Muslims, these
were the three challenges that every Muslim community
had to deal with, external, internal, or affairs
of the heart.
Imam Ghazali, in this passage, is not dealing
with the latter.
He's dealing with the first one.
But he teaches us something very, very important,
and that is he teaches us the importance
of uniting and sequence.
Now, it's not just him.
Let me share with you two hadiths tonight.
Okay, we don't have a ton of time,
but let me give you two hadiths.
And by the way, if you have any
questions, if you want to ask any questions,
we have slido.com, and you can type
in the words 30 and up, and you
can send in your questions, inshallah.
And we'll do some Q&A at the
end.
There's two ahadith that are narrated by Aisha,
رضي الله عنها, أم المؤمنين عائشة الصديقة, that
really have always blown my mind.
And you may have heard the first one.
The first one is actually pretty well-known.
But the second one is even more phenomenal,
subhanallah.
So, revelation of Quran came from Allah, subhanahu
wa ta'ala, to the Prophet Muhammad, sallallahu
alayhi wa sallam, over the course of 23
years.
Okay, so it started when he was 40,
and it ended when he passed away, alayhis
salatu was salam, when he was 63 years
old.
That's the process of revelation, the story of
Quran.
Why didn't the Quran just come down in
one moment?
Why didn't it just come down at once?
Like, wouldn't that have made, again, in our
mind, in our, mashallah, advanced, you know, senior,
advanced degrees, partner at Deloitte, right, MD, you
know, chief resident, wouldn't it have made more
sense?
Okay, and I'm saying this sarcastically.
If Allah just sent down the book once,
Jibreel just comes down, he's like, here, and
then we have it.
Now, again, in theory, we think to ourselves,
yes, and part of that is why.
Well, did you guys know that the Quran
was revealed and preserved through a oral tradition,
primarily?
Meaning it wasn't even written in a full
book format in the way that we're comfortable
with it until the end of the life
of the Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, and even
then it wasn't compiled in a book format
and bound until after his life.
Now, when we say this, a lot of
people in the room get nervous.
They're like, oh God, how do we know
that the Quran is actually accurate if it
wasn't written down?
But that's your Western Greek philosophical mind speaking.
Because many of us have not experienced the
power of true memorization.
We have, but not to the level that
we read about.
I'll give you an example.
If I said, okay, I'm going to read
Surah Al-Fatiha.
Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alamoon What does
everyone in this room know?
Ala what?
Alameen.
Very good, right?
That is an indication of the...
No one has their Mus'haf open, right?
Did I need you to correct me from
the Mus'haf?
No, you didn't.
You didn't have to.
Because your memorization of Fatiha is so good
that when you heard the mistake, you were
instantly able to do it.
And this happens.
We once had an imam who led all
of Ramadan.
Miskeen.
He was amazing.
Super, super, mashallah, well-known.
And by the end of the month, you're
tired.
And in Surah Al-Fatiha, you can imagine
how many times he's repeated it.
He forgot an ayah.
And all of a sudden, everyone in the
masjid became hafidh.
You know, usually you have two or three
people in the front that correct.
I think he went from like...
I think he skipped Iyak and Al-Badu
Iyak.
I forget.
He skipped one of the ayats of Surah
Al-Fatiha.
Everyone!
It was like as loud as the Takbir.
And he's like, okay.
Like you just, you feel him.
He's like, God, man, it's been 30 days.
Give me a break.
You know, 29 days.
So the point being is, now, I want
you to imagine the confidence with which you
would correct somebody in Fatiha, like you would
correct me right there.
But I want you to imagine now that
your memory is so good that you actually
have that confidence, not just with Fatiha, but
with every verse of Quran that you know.
This actually was the reality of preservation, not
just for Muslims, but for everybody before the
advent of writing and especially before the printing
press.
And now, no one challenges Homer with the
Odyssey.
No one challenges him with the Iliad.
Oh, he recited this poem, this story, this
incredible story from his mind.
He was blind.
Homer, the famous poet.
He was blind.
He recited it from memory.
10,000 lines.
Nobody in my English or my ancient literature
classes were like, oh, we doubt his authenticity.
But when it comes to the preservation of
Quran, all of a sudden, it's like, how
do we know?
Well, why did Homer get a pass, but
the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam didn't?
There's definitely some undertones there, okay?
So Wahi comes down, and it doesn't come
down in one book.
It comes down over time, and there's a
lot of reasons.
Allah actually says in the Quran, لِنُثَبِّتُ بِهِ
فُؤَادِكَ One of the reasons is because the
purpose of the Quran being done through gradual
revelation is to strengthen the heart of the
Prophet Isa Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam.
It's like a medicine.
It's like nourishment.
And he's going through a lot of difficulty
in his life.
And every time he goes through a moment
that challenges him, revelation comes down and it
lifts his spirits.
It gives him strength.
It reinforces him.
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam That's one of the reasons.
But another reason is actually told to us
by Aisha.
Let me tell you this narration.
It's narrated by Yusuf Ibn Mahak.
He said that Aisha radiAllahu anha, she said
that verily the first verses إِنَّمَا نَزَلَ أَوَّلَ
مَا نَزَلَ مِنْهُ صُورَةٌ مِنَ الْمُفَصَلِ He said
verily the first verses to be revealed were
from the shorter chapters of the end of
the Quran.
So obviously we know that the first revelation
or you may have known, it's Iqra, Surah
Al-Alaq.
And then actually all of the verses and
chapters that were revealed in Mecca were typically
from the end of the Quran, the shorter
ones.
The topics that they dealt with were things
like faith, belief in Allah, belief in the
Day of Judgment, belief in prophets.
Nothing legal yet.
Nothing do this, don't do this, do this,
don't do this.
And she explains why.
She says, in them the mentions of Paradise
and Hellfire until people's faith was firmly established
upon Islam and then she says Allah revealed
the verses of Halal and Haram.
Now listen to this.
She says this line.
She says, وَلَوْ نَزَلَ أَوَّلَ شَيْءٍ لَا تَشْرَبُوا
الْخَمْرَةِ She goes, if the first thing that
Allah revealed was don't drink alcohol, don't drink
wine.
Exactly.
She said that if that were the first
thing, she says, لَقَالُوا لَا نَدْعُوا الْخَمْرَةِ The
people would have said, we will never stop
drinking.
We will never stop drinking.
And then she said, وَلَوْ نَزَلَ If the
first verses to be revealed were, do not
commit Zina, لَا تَزْنُوا لَقَالُوا لَا نَدْعُوا الْخَمْرَةِ
أَبَدًا We will never stop committing this sin
ever, fornicating ever.
Wow.
Now if you were to ask any Muslim,
like what are the worst sins a person
can do?
Okay?
I guarantee you, top three are mentioned, some
of them are mentioned here.
Top five at least.
If it's top ten, then we have to
talk.
InshaAllah, right?
There's not much, I mean, there's worse, but
there's not much.
So, but the point being is, think about
that.
She's saying, these are the worst major sins.
Some of the worst major sins.
And she's saying, if Allah had set down
these as the first and second verses, no
one would have believed.
No one would have believed.
What does this mean?
Well, let me give you the second one,
and then we'll explain.
The Prophet ﷺ, again narrated by Aisha radiAllahu
anha.
She said, and this is narrated in Bukhari
Muslim.
She said, that the Prophet ﷺ said to
her, Ya Aisha.
She said, لولا أن قومك حديث عهدي بجاهليتي.
He said, Aisha, if your nation had not
recently left Jahiliyyah, they're brand new Muslims, then
the Prophet ﷺ is standing there, and he's
looking at the Ka'bah, and he says
to Aisha radiAllahu anha, I would have, what's
the right word?
I would have taken down the bricks of
the Ka'bah one by one, and I
would have rebuilt the Ka'bah historically on
the Asas Ibrahim, on the foundations of Prophet
Ibrahim.
Because since the time of Prophet Ibrahim, there
were many different historical events that happened, floods,
wars, battles, and as a result of that,
every time they renovated the Ka'bah, it
went from being a longer structure to being
a cube.
But if you go to Mecca today and
you look, what you'll notice is that the
Ka'bah, even though the structure is a
cube, there's something called Hijr Ismail.
There's this like little arch on the bottom.
That was the original shape of the Ka
'bah.
It actually was more of like a silo
or a domed kind of structure.
But what's he saying?
This is the most important building on earth.
It is the most sacred piece of land
on earth, the Ka'bah.
And he's saying what, salallahu alayhi wa sallam?
Had it not been for your people, meaning
like the brand new Muslims from Aisha radiallahu
anha, from her generation, her people, etc, who
had accepted Islam, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa
sallam said, I would have taken it down,
and I would have rebuilt it upon the
foundations Ibrahim, and I would have put two
doors in it, because there used to be
two doors in it, and I would have
changed the way those doors were facing.
Okay.
What did Imam al-Ghazali say in the
beginning in the passage?
He said what?
There are some things that are priority, and
there are some things that are less priority.
When it comes to things that are priority,
they are things that establish faith, and that
preserve faith, and that keep faith.
And when it comes to things, they're there,
they're important, but they're not high priority, according
to Imam al-Ghazali's wisdom, and we heard
from the hadith of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi
wa sallam, of course his wisdom, is what?
It's okay to have a sequence.
It's okay to have an order.
It's okay to say to yourself, that you
know what?
We have five things that we're talking about,
one and two are really important, three, four,
five are not that important, for now, in
comparison.
They will become important once we accomplish one
and two, but we don't want to confuse
three, four, five, with one and two.
Let me give you an example.
Somebody accepts Islam.
They become Muslim.
It's their first day.
We had a shahada last night.
We had a shahada last week.
There's probably one in here tonight too, inshallah.
Don't be shy.
Okay?
It's like an auction, Muslim auction.
Okay.
Someone converts to Islam.
My own father, he's a convert to Islam.
Okay?
What was the first thing that my father
was told after he accepted Islam?
What was the first thing that a Muslim
person, I want you to imagine now.
You're meeting Jim Murphy.
Okay?
Has converted.
Has accepted Islam.
This is before every modern historical event that
we can conceive of.
9-11, all of that.
Right?
This is like Lawrence of Arabia type stuff.
You see Jim Murphy, a white Irish American
from Springfield, Illinois, walking towards you into the
masjid, and you're a Muslim.
And you look at that guy.
What's the first thing you tell him about
his journey into Islam?
Say, salamu alaikum, wa alaikum salam.
What's your name?
My name's Jim.
My name's James Murphy.
I'm a new Muslim.
What's the first thing that you say?
Who said that?
Yeah.
He knows the story.
What's the first thing that you should say?
Let me say this.
What's the first thing that a Muslim should
say?
Welcome.
Welcome.
Tell me about yourself.
Have you read the Quran yet?
Do you know about the life of the
Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him?
Oh, okay.
You know what?
There's a really good book.
Let me take you and we'll get this
book.
And then maybe we can even read it.
Like, here's my number.
Read.
We'll do a little book club together.
Yeah.
Have you read it?
Do you understand, like, do you need anything?
Do you need, like, any translations?
Do you need this and that?
Yeah, sure.
What's the first?
Okay, that's, like, that would be, like, the
perfect Muslim.
Right?
In sha Allah.
What do you think my dad was told?
No.
Alhamdulillah, actually, my dad, interestingly, never touched alcohol
even before he became Muslim.
It was interesting.
But, yes, okay, don't drink.
My dad was told something even more absurd.
Change your name, number one.
Oh, Jim.
No, I'll go with pray five times a
day.
I'll go with pray.
That's not even as absurd, right?
At least we got some positive progress there.
He was told, change your name.
Jim.
Jim, what is this?
Are you Muslim?
And then he was told, no more McDonald's.
And that was before the boycott, okay?
This is before the, no more Big Macs.
According to my dad, two of the five
pillars of Islam were name and no more
Big Macs.
That's all he knew.
That's all he knew.
And you know what's interesting?
Subhanallah, you know, we give a lot of,
we throw a lot of shade on different
parts of the world for being maybe a
little bit traditional, this and that.
My dad still holds, still today, that when
he felt like he learned true Islam was
from when he was building King Fahd Hospital
in Riyadh.
And he was there with Malaysians and Bangladeshis
and Pakistanis and Saudis and Egyptians.
And he learned from them the principles of
Islam during Iftar.
This is his first time living in the
Muslim world.
My parents lived in Saudi for a while.
And he said that these people taught me
Islam.
He said that when I came back to
America and I met some of the people
in America, they said their focus of Islam
was hyper-legal.
Like crazy.
Like it was almost like Talmudic.
It was like you have the Ten Commandments.
It's like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
And subhanallah, that really stuck with him.
And it really challenged his comfort in that
particular masjid.
And a lot of us, you know, as
humorous as that story might be now, a
lot of us look back at our own
upbringing and we see what?
We see the absence of what al-Ghazali
is saying.
Al-Ghazali is saying, you need to prioritize.
It's not about the differences in where you
hold your hands if the person is not
even praying yet.
If the person is not praying, it's not
about what time is Asr.
I've actually seen this argument before.
I've seen two people that don't pray talking
about how to pray.
I'm like, let's start first and then get
there.
There's a priority.
But the danger, subhanallah, how does this all
tie back to the point of al-Ghazali,
is the danger with Greek philosophy and the
fruits that grow from that soil is that
it is an ideology that is so prevalent
in theory and speculation and not practice.
And that's why the Quran commands believers, O
you who believe, do, do, do.
إِلَّا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا وَعَمِلُوا الصَّالِحَاتِ Allah commands the
believers.
Your belief will never be complete unless you
act on it.
If you get stuck at the point of
theory and speculation and pontificating and opinions and
this and that, you will never experience the
ma'rifah of Allah that will give you
that clarity.
And you will start to misprioritize.
You will start to misprioritize.
Subhanallah, many of our own, our own, us
here at 39th, our religious education suffered as
a result of the lack of prioritization.
Many of our children that are being raised
as Muslim are suffering because there's a lack
of understanding the hierarchy of what's important.
It doesn't mean that we don't want them
to accomplish certain status as Muslims as they
get older.
But there's no doubt per the words of
the Prophet peace be upon him himself that
if we don't approach this correctly, it can
be destructive.
There are more Muslim kids and more Muslims
in general know what not to do than
what to do.
They know what the punishments are than what
the rewards are.
They know signs of the Day of Judgment
before they know any Qur'an.
My son who's seven, who goes to Islamic
school, right?
Comes home and tells me, Baba, is it
true that the Dajjal has one eye?
Why do you even know who the Dajjal
is?
Right?
And then my daughter who's five is like,
No, he has two but one of them
is injured.
I said, now you know the difference of
opinion?
You can't even read Surah Al-Ikhlas yet.
What are you doing?
But this is the problem.
We have not understood the importance of sequencing.
You can't build a house where the foundation
is not strong.
You cannot put beautiful furniture and beautiful decorations
in a home that hasn't been constructed properly.
So what makes us think that if we
continue to misalign and incorrectly focus on the
wrong things that we're going to have beautiful
Muslims?
We have to rethink, starting with ourselves.
How are we going to construct our Islam?
I'll tell you.
بُنِيَ الإِسْلَامُ عَلَى خَمْسٍ The Prophet ﷺ said,
Islam is built on five things.
He uses the word بُنِيَ بِنَاء Structure بُنِيَ
الإِسْلَامُ عَلَى خَمْسٍ Islam is built on five
things.
الشهادة لا إله إلا الله ورحمه وبركاته الصلاة
prayer zakah charity as-siyam fasting and hajj
Until, up and until a person feels that
they are confident, that they are fulfilling the
quality and the qualitative rights of their belief,
their prayer, their charity, their fasting, their hajj,
a person does not need to engage in
the minutia of Islamic discourse.
There's no need for a person to jump
into the Twitter spaces and the TikTok battles
and all of these things that are designed
to distract the believer on their journey on
the straight path without a doubt.
May Allah Ta'ala give us tilfiq.
May Allah Ta'ala give us the wisdom
of the Prophet ﷺ, of Imam al-Ghazali
that we read and we understand that these
guys, Imam al-Ghazali who knew more about
Islam than all of us in this room
combined, he said, Guys, when it comes to
the real existential crisis of belief in Allah,
let's put all the differences aside.
Let's focus on what matters most.
We ask Allah Ta'ala to give us
tilfiq.
Okay, let's do inshallah some Q&A.
We have five minutes.
Question number one, topic.
Drum roll please.
Marriage, okay.
Should you continue getting to know someone who's
planning to settle down in two to three
years due to family obligations or move on?
What will be most pleasing to Allah?
That question is a dangerous line of thought
because really this is not a question in
which there is permissible or impermissible.
It's just a preference.
It's a preference.
If you want to get married to somebody,
it's a compatibility question.
Is their timeline compatible with yours?
If it is, then bismillah.
If it's not, you have to decide.
Are you willing to change your timeline or
not?
Are they willing to change theirs or not?
But you don't want to ever frame these
questions in the light of is this pleasing
to Allah or not because Allah did not
obligate that a person has to do something
at a certain time necessarily.
If this person has different aspirations, they're allowed
to have those aspirations.
As long as they're not committing haram as
a result of them.
They can't say, oh, I want to make
a lot of money.
I'm going to commit zina while I do
it.
That's not okay.
We know that if a person is able
and if they're capable and if fitna is
on them, then they do have to get
married.
But if a person is simply pursuing their
aspirations, whatever they might be, it doesn't have
to be your flavor, but whatever they might
be, if it's within the realm of permissibility,
the timeline is not obligated upon them.
And so this is really more of a
question of compatibility than it is a question
of what is most pleasing to Allah.
What is most pleasing to Allah is doing
the right thing and not falling into sin
as a result of whatever decision you make.
Wallahu ala.
Okay?
Your best pieces of advice on raising good
children.
Man, I need it.
If you know, tell me.
SubhanAllah, man.
I do think one thing that I've learned.
So I have two young kids.
So I have yet to engage.
I mean, it's challenging, subhanAllah, but I have
yet to engage with a lot of more,
you know, the older challenges.
I was a youth director for 10 years,
so I saw a lot of it.
But I will say the problems that my
kids are going to experience in teenage years,
don't even exist yet.
So it's like they're creating this fitna right
now in the labs, right?
Elon and his boys, Mark and Elon and
these weirdos.
So they're making all this stuff and we're
just praying that, you know, something happens.
But I think what I've learned.
So I like to interview parents a lot.
When I see parents who have kids who
their relationship with their kids are good, I
ask them questions like, please tell me.
And I say to them like, how did
you maintain this relationship?
And they say, you know, the one thing
that we didn't, they always, you know, blame
themselves.
Oh, we're not good, this and that.
The one thing they always say is they
say, we just wanted to make sure our
kids knew that no matter what, even if
we didn't agree or approve, they could always
come to us.
And so I know it's a difficult journey,
but may Allah make it easy for all
those who have kids or who want to
have kids.
Okay, next one.
Yeah, like a couple more minutes.
I find myself trying to fortify my relationship
with Allah and Dua instead of using dating
apps or websites.
Does that count as tying your camel if
your goal is marriage?
You should do both.
I mean, you know, you should, a person
if they're, let's take this away from marriage
specific.
If a person is trying to get a
job, if a person is trying to buy
something, you know, or whatever requires process, you
need to obviously engage with Dua because Allah
is the one who opens doors, right?
But then you also need to go to
the door and try to open it.
So there's two sides to it.
You can't just sit and say, okay, I'm
going to make Dua and Allah will give
it to me because that according to the
Prophet is not appropriate, right?
Because Allah wants to see action from a
believer.
However, you also can't think to yourself, I'm
in charge and I'm going to figure it
out because that's misunderstanding how the world works.
So the proper healthy approach is that a
person does their part and then they pray
to Allah and Allah will facilitate or protect
this person from something that they are pursuing.
May Allah ta'ala make it easy.
Allahu a'lam.
I want to get married.
Should I keep trying to find someone through
my family and apps or wait for Allah?
I'm smiling because wait for Allah is really,
it's just miskeen.
Like I feel bad but it's just the
frame, wait for Allah to give me somebody.
I mean, waiting for Allah is an interesting
way of framing that.
Like I said in the previous answer, keep
working, keep working.
You know, let me give you some advice
for people who are looking to get married.
It goes really slow until it doesn't.
So just keep trying inshaAllah.
May Allah make it easy inshaAllah.
Does roots slash qalam have resources on learning
how to pray?
I go through the motions of prayer but
I don't know and I want to learn.
Absolutely, alhamdulillah.
We actually are launching, so I taught this
class called Pillars on Sundays.
We finished one semester of it and we're
relaunching it which is gonna be foundational Islamic
knowledge for adults.
Whether it's a person who converted or a
person who was born into Islam, doesn't matter.
Foundational Islamic knowledge for adults inshaAllah.
It's gonna be starting at the end of
this month.
You'll see the flyers for that.
Also on September 15th, we're launching on Sunday,
we're launching Convert Connections which is gonna be
a social support group for brothers and sisters
who accepted Islam or their spouses or their
children.
So it's gonna be like an entire convert
ecosystem led by Sheikh Mahmood who is I
think here with his son and his wife
somewhere.
But inshaAllah we're launching that program.
It's been long, long overdue but we're gonna
be having a lot more resources for that
inshaAllah.
Just give us a couple of weeks.
We're getting all of the details tied up,
alhamdulillah.
Okay, last question and then we'll go for
Maghrib inshaAllah.
Can you comment on the point about Muslim
unity as it pertains to Sunni-Shia relations?
I noticed that Sunnis can make room for
other Madhhabs but not for sects.
Yeah, this is a very, very good point
actually.
So the standard and the boundary that Muslims
have for belief is exactly that, is belief.
And so is a Shia Muslim considered a
Muslim according to Sunni sources?
It depends on what they believe.
If that person has no beliefs that are
counter to what the Sunni believes but they
have a different opinion on the political follow
-through after the death of the Prophet Isa
AS, they are considered Muslim.
As long as they don't negate the core
beliefs of what Islam offers.
But if that person holds in their belief
something that is counter, so you can't say
yes to all or no to all, right?
In my understanding, per my understanding, the majority
of people that are Shia Muslim are considered
Muslim by Sunnis.
But there are some, and we cannot erase
this.
Why?
Because if there's a person that, for example,
calls Aisha RA a sinner and a fornicator,
walayat billah.
If there's a person that curses Abu Bakr
and Umar, etc.
These are big deals.
It's not a small deal.
You can't say to the Prophet, hey, I
hate your best friend and your wife and
Umar.
You can't do that, right?
That's off limits.
But if a person says, you know what?
I truly believe that leadership of the Muslim
Ummah should have been kept within Ahlul Bayt
after the death of the Prophet, that's a
political opinion that someone is allowed to have.
Now, I may disagree with it, but it's
political.
It's not spiritual.
If the difference is spiritual, then we don't
agree.
But if the difference is political, assalamu alaikum,
right?
You're my Muslim brother and sister.
So it depends on what the person believes,
right?
It depends on what the person believes.
Wallahu ala.
Okay?
Feeling disillusioned.
I grew up Muslim and consider myself Muslim,
but how can I feel it in my
heart?
I always feel indifferent and it scares me.
We'll stop here, but I'm going to answer
this question because it goes into the answer
which is if a person feels disconnected from
Allah, you always have to ask yourself as
the famous internet saying goes, who moved, right?
Who moved?
If someone feels distant from Allah, who moved?
And if the answer is, as it always
is, me, I moved, then I have to
restore my journey back to him.
And how do we do that?
We commit ourselves to the prayers.
We commit ourselves to giving up behaviors that
we know he doesn't love.
We spend time in good company.
We commit ourselves to remembering him and reading
his book and learning about his beloved messenger,
salallahu alayhi wasalam, and we try our best
to follow him.
These steps sound very rudimentary and simple, but
I promise you, the connection of all of
them together bears huge, huge fruits, pays massive
dividends in the spiritual journey that a person
has.
May Allah ta'ala make it easy.
Wallahu a'lam.
Barakallahu feekum, everybody.
Jazakumullahu khairan.
If you could help us, inshallah, with the
chairs that you have, if you don't mind
folding it and stacking it on the dollies
in the hallway on your way to the
Masala for Maghrib, if you sat on these
backjacks, if you don't mind lining them up
for me here, we'd really appreciate it.
I'll see you guys in the Masala for
Maghrib.
Wassalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.