Abdullah Hakim Quick – New Muslim – Corner – Islamic Awareness Week in Trinidad and Tobago
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AI: Transcript ©
Rahim A Alhamdulillah,
this
is
our continuation of Our new Muslim corner, and it's our intention to
keep our rhythm, to keep the momentum, so that there is a place
where new Muslims can come, where questions can be asked and where
new information can be shared.
So this week,
we a little bit different than the normal class where we are looking
at a certain aspect of Islamic thought and theory. This time, we
want to look at something practical, in the sense that
I was invited to come to Trinidad and Tobago for Islamic Awareness
Week, and that took place
in this month of August. And Alhamdulillah, it was very
successful program, and it was sponsored by the Islamic dawah
movement. And this movement is keeping the concept of dawah going
and that is to call
to Islam. And the main message of the prophets, all of the prophets
and messengers, or the main action that they did, was to call to the
Oneness of Allah, and to call to righteousness and to forbid evil.
So that really is the main job of Muslims. The main job is not to
form an Islamic state,
or it's not to only eat halal food or to dress in a certain type of
dress, but the main mission of the Muslims is to call to the Oneness
of Allah
and Dawa, and that's the term that we use from the Arabic daha
yaduru, which means to invite or to call
Dawa, is what is called Farad kefaya.
And Farid kefaya
means that if, for instance, a Muslim dies within the community,
so Janaza prayer has to be done for that Muslim.
And if within a community, the person dies, and it's known by the
community, and nobody makes janazah,
then the whole community is in sin. It's been a wrong done by the
whole of the community so far. Kefir means that somebody from
that community would take the responsibility and would perform
the janazah prayer, the funeral prayer for that fallen Muslim. And
so the issue of having to do it, the compulsory act of making
funeral is lifted. So this is what is called fat kefaya.
Okay, so a small group can be sufficient for the whole jam, the
whole group.
Okay, so Dawa calling to Islam
being an example,
putting out the word to those who are not Muslim is fared kefaya.
And if nobody is doing it within the community, then actually the
whole community is living in sin.
And so
even though the world is going through the changes that it's
going through. Dawah has to continue. It must continue.
And so this was an action of dawah, and the wisdom in dawah is
to be able to say the right thing at the right time
that a person who is calling needs to understand the circumstances of
the person or the place where he's calling.
What are the different influences? This gives you wisdom, right? Just
like a doctor, if you come to a doctor and the doctor looks at
you, you.
Um, and maybe takes your temperature and says, Okay, and
just gives you some medicine next That doctor is not for real,
okay, the real doctor wants to know something about your history.
Wants You know, it's going to check your eyes. It's going to
check your blood. They're going to check, you know, based upon the
type of medicine they do, they'll check different aspects you know,
of your being. What is your condition? How long have you been
sick? What is it? And then once they get all that information,
then they can make an analysis, and they can give you the
medicine. So that would be hikma. That's wisdom.
And so the area of Trinidad and Tobago is a unique place in the
Caribbean region.
And if you look at the map here and go down to Venezuela,
and you'll see, just on the top right of Venezuela, there's a
brown island there, and that is Trinidad and Tobago is a small
island off the coast of Trinidad,
and so both of them make up a republic, Trinidad and Tobago.
And it is said the geologists actually say that
in ancient times. I don't know how many 1000s of years ago, Trinidad
was actually part of South America, but because of
continental shift, it broke away
from South America. But the temperature the animals, the
fauna, meaning the grass, the vegetation, it's South American,
whereas in other islands in the Caribbean region,
it's different. It's still tropical, but this is South
American. And I noticed that when I first went into Guyana, I had
been living in Jamaica for a while, and used to the Jamaican
climate. And when I went to Guyana and flew over the rainforest,
looked down, said, No, this is different here. This is not an
island. This is Amazon. You're now in Amazon region. You see so
Trinidad would be part of that area, geographically,
in terms of its population,
Trinidad has natural port,
so therefore it was one of the places that could be used as a
base of operations. And in ancient times, there were the original
people, the Caribs, the Arawaks, the lucayans, the Taino who have
lived in this area for 1000s of years, and it settled and left
their impact upon the society. And when the Portuguese and then the
Spanish came,
they took over certain areas. So you'll find in the Caribbean
islands, there are Spanish islands, and they're like Cuba and
Puerto Rico were the most famous, and Hispaniola, which is now
Dominican Republic. And then there are French islands, there's Dutch
and this English or British who had taken over and colonized the
island Trinidad went through changes. It changed hands. So even
Trinidad itself is a Spanish word. It's like Trinity, so literally
means the Trinity, the Father Son and the Holy Ghost. So because
Catholics had come in originally to the area, and being a port
city,
it was an important base for the colonial project and in the
African slave trade period, between 1500
to 1870
African people were captured and stolen political prisoners and
enslaved and taken from West Africa and Central Africa to the
Americas. So you can see this chart gives you
the movement and how they went to different places into the region.
And you can see that actually, Brazil, as quiet as it's kept,
has, you know, the largest African population in the West is Brazil.
So this gives you an idea. And this slave trade, of course, was a
terrible thing, where people were taken, you know, from their lands,
and forced to work in plantations. And the brutality of slavery was
such that
the people lost their identity, were forced to accept
Christianity, lost their religions, so many there was a
brutal time during this Atlantic slave trade period, but we do
recognize now and it wasn't recognized until only about a.
30 years ago or so, that somewhere between 15 to 30% of the African
slaves who came into the region were Muslims. So this was not
known before. People just took it for granted, and it was. It was a
stereotype being used by the West to say Arabs, like the Arabs,
started the slave trade and then gave it to the Europeans. That's a
major mistake, because there's no Arabs in West Africa. So West
Africa and Central Africa, where the slaves were taken from, there
were no Arabs to give slaves to the Europeans. Slavery was an
international phenomenon,
right? The word slave comes from Slav because the Romans were
taking Slavic people as slaves.
Everywhere had slaves.
Okay, so what was thought the propaganda was that there were no
Muslims. All the people who came across were of different Ashanti
and different Yoruba religion and different other types of ways of
life. But we now have proof, and that comes from eyewitness
reports, written documents, autobiographies, so many records
have come forward. Historians cannot hold back now. They tried
to cover it,
but they can't now. And this document you see there in Arabic
was written by an enslaved African person.
Many of the people who came especially from the Fulani people,
the Fula people and the mande or Mandinka Mandingo people, were
ulama. They were scholars, and they had been captured for
whatever the reason is, and brought into a state of slavery.
Okay, so in some cases, the scholars even wrote the whole
Quran from their memory.
And there are some copies of these Qurans, like in the Smithsonian
Institute in Washington,
this whole Qurans from the memory of a person who was enslaved. So
there's so many stories in that, and we capture this in what we
call deeper roots. I have a book called deeper roots, which you can
you know, that's my website,
and
it shows the different waves of people who came into the region.
And so this, for instance,
is Arabic writing
of a liberated African slaves in Carmichael, Nassau, Bahamas. So
many of you heard about the Bahamas and Nassau. Okay, so
African people were captured and taken there to work on the
plantations. Amongst them were scholars. So this is a document
written in Arabic by somebody who was in slavery in Bahamas,
okay? And there's a lot of interesting information there in
that region.
Just to give you a taste of this big area of study,
Mohammed Kaaba was so a place called Bucha, which is in he was
of the malinke people of Guinea, which is now Guinea in West
Africa, okay, and he was studying to be a judge. Akadi, it's a high
position in Islamic society. In any society, he was studying to be
a judge, and he was captured at 20 years old, and he was taken to
Jamaica.
But his writings still are preserved. Abu Bakr Sadiq, who was
a scholar from Timbuktu, the famous city of Timbuktu, city of
scholars, he was captured and taken to Jamaica in 1834,
okay, there's just two examples, and he wrote extensively in
Arabic. And
there's even documents that they found in Jamaica of a document
called watika.
And this watika was calling the enslaved people to revolution,
okay? And that document was found there in Jamaica. And there is a
famous document in West African history by a scholar, Shekhar
Mandan Fodio, who is a great Fula Fulani scholar. And this was
watika ibn fudi ila ala Sudan.
And so the same watika name was being you, he was calling his
people to rebel against the wicked kings at the time. So it's like a
revolutionary Islamic type of document. Okay, so this was found
there. You can see documents on the right, something written by a
person who was enslaved.
So this is your region, and again, for those who may have just come
on the right.
Side. Bottom of your screen is Trinidad,
okay, Trinidad Tobago, just off the coast of Venezuela,
okay? And the Muslims in Trinidad, I would say in the region, they're
actually unique,
because there's a lot of information that was preserved
amongst the people there, and we have up until today there, you
know, in Trinidad, and because it was a port city, there's a lot of
influences were coming into Trinidad, and a lot of scholars, a
lot of different types of people were coming in. So the history
from the slavery period on there in Trinidad is a very interesting
one, and it was in the 19th century. Remember, slavery ended
then,
so the British decided to bring in indentured laborers. So they
brought in indentured laborers from India and from Java
Indonesia.
The people from Indonesia were generally sent to Dutch Guyana.
That is what is called Suriname. Now, okay, Dutch Guyana.
And so
in the 19th century,
there was actually a thriving Muslim community, African Muslim
community. So this is different than what a lot of people
understand about the Caribbean region, and that's why Trinidad
really stands out, because we actually have some proof of this.
So there was a thriving community there in Port of Spain, and it was
led by a person named Eunice Mohammed bath. They called him
Jonah,
and
he originally was part he was enslaved and got his freedom, and
many of the Africans served in what was called the West Indian
regiment. So this picture here, when the British were organizing
their troops, they brought people from different parts of the world,
and they wanted some local people to deal with the tropical area. So
they got African people to join and in the West Indian regiment
had a special uniform. Now, if you look at the uniform there on the
left, you would think that they're Muslims. Look closely at it's got
a turban and with a tail on the back, a red cap,
his vest, this would be the dress of the Ottoman Turks. So if you
know Ottoman history, this is the dress of the Ottomans.
The British was so influenced by the Ottomans
that they actually copied their military dress.
They even copied their dress for their colonels and generals and
whatnot from the Ottomans. Okay, especially Ottomans who were
living in Algeria, because they were controlling Algeria, North
Africa for a while.
So these were actually African people who, for whatever reason,
came into the West Indian regiment. So these are the people
who were in the forts in different parts of the Caribbean. Now, in
the case of Eunice Mohammed bath,
he was a community religious leader, okay, born in West Africa.
He was, he was enslaved, transported Trinidad in 1804
right? But he was able to purchase his freedom,
okay, so he was so active that he was able to get enough money and
he bought his own freedom. Okay? He's really intelligent, active
person, and he became the leader of the Mandingo community. He was
from the Mandinka, or the mandate, people who have a great history
Mali, the empire of Mali,
Mansa, Musa, the richest man who ever lived on Earth, was from this
group. Okay, they are natural merchants and travelers there so.
But the British were so impressed by Eunice Mohammed bath, they
described him as the chief priest or patriarch of the entire Muslim
population of the colonies. So whenever they had legal issues to
deal with, with African people who coming out of slavery or living
there, whatever they would refer to him.
Okay, so that's the level that he reached, and he actually
petitioned the British government to go back to Africa.
So that's how active he was. But the British at that time, they
didn't do indentured, indentured labor out of love for anybody.
They wanted to make money, and
if you have to start repatriating Africans to Africa.
America. That's going to be costly, especially going back
across the Atlantic. It's going to be very costly. You may have to go
up, because how the currents go. You'd have to go up to Europe and
then down. You can't just go back across the current Okay,
so they rejected his petitions for his people, but Eunice Muhammad
bath, you know, we know approximately where his Masjid
was,
and there's a street called bath Street in Port of Spain named
after Eunice Muhammad bath. Okay, another interesting person was
Muhammad Sisi, and he was Mandinka as well, and he was a part of the
West Indian regiment. And
when they started to let disband it, and people started to just
live. Were allowed to just live there. He succeeded. His story is
an interesting story, because he was an organizer. And so he
organized the people, the Muslims there, African Muslims, he
organized them, and they had a actually had a community there,
and they controlled different properties. And it was in the
northeast corner manzanillah section of Trinidad that they had
they were growing crops. And it said that one year there was a
drought. And Port of Spain actually survived because of
Muhammad. Sees these people, they fed them.
So that's the level that they reached in terms of their
organization. So there's a lot of tradition there amongst African
people. There in Trinidad,
during the indentured labor period, Indian people, Indian
Muslims, came, and they were allowed to keep their religion,
keep their name, they could own property. And so they succeeded in
holding on to their Islam. They built masjids that look similar to
Masjid India, and they had madrassas they call mektab, and
they preserved their identity, and they really now the leading force
in this part of the Caribbean because of the work that they had
done. So this was the Islamic awareness week program that I was
invited to right which went on between the ninth and the 17th
there, and along with the Islamic tower movement, Alhamdulillah, we
organized a series of programs. And this was a coming back out for
the the IDM. I'll call them IDM for since the covid times, they
had not really done public because covid, you know, locked everything
down for everybody. So since that time, but now they came out of
themselves, and we organized a series of events that would go
over a week period. Okay? So the first one began with the Juma
chutba. Okay. Generally, the events, if you look at
the map here
you can see in the north Center,
you can see Port of Spain to the left.
And if you look in the center of the North then you will see
tuna Puna and San Juan and Arima and chaguanas. So these are the
areas where most of our programs were,
and the reason was because in the south, although there are Muslims
in Princess town, in Rio cloud and other areas, but the traffic just
like Toronto. Now there's so many cars, there's more cars than
people, so it's a traffic jam, all that, you know, most of the time.
So to get from one place to another
becomes really difficult there. So therefore we held the programs
basically in the area of the center part there. So the first
one was, what was the Juma Priya that was held at the Jama Masjid
in Port of Spain. And you can see the masjid there. It's built in
sort of the style like masjids in India. And it's interesting,
because all the places where the indentured laborers went to in the
world, you'll see masjids like this. I ran into this in South
Africa, in Cape Town, especially Durban, in Durban, in
Johannesburg, but also in Mauritius and in the Fiji's, all
the places where indentured laborers went from India, they
built their masjids in this style. So this.
Was that the East dry river, it is the most popular Masjid there in
Port of Spain. What is happening now and again? This is part of the
wisdom how we did this program. Because one of the biggest issues
now that's happening is crime. There's a lot of crime that is
going on, especially in Port of Spain area, because the drugs are
coming in. Again, Venezuela is there, and Colombia, so there's
drugs coming up
Port of Spain. It's a port, so it's a place where you can
distribute. So there's a lot of drugs, and there's gangsters who
are living there. So there are literally territories in Port of
Spain itself. And because of the proliferation of automatic
weapons, that's part of the sickness of our societies. Best of
the United States, there's automatic weapons there,
so they're actually fighting each other, and a lot of crime is
there. But we were prepared for this. We were not going to back
off. So we still had the program. Alhamdulillah, it was a it was a
packed house, and there were so many people. People had to go
around the front side. This is the front side. Normally, you don't
park your car there or across the street, because that's gangland
territory,
so they had to send a squad of the police to actually circle the
place to protect the cars, right? This isn't a day and Friday, I'm
talking about night, right during the day, okay, so that, but
Alhamdulillah, still Muslims, you see the brothers smiling and
everything and place was packed.
You just have to know where not to go,
and you learn the signs the brothers were showing me. We drove
to Port of Spain as six, seven and eight. These are all gangs. So if
you're in the seven area, you know you have to be either from the
sevens. If you pass quickly through, you're alright. But if
you're a six and you're in the seven area,
right, this is how gangsters become like warlords. But
alhamdulillah, regardless of this, Islam has to be spread.
So this is the father of it, right? That work has to be done.
So we began our program there, and then we did a television interview
brother Mirza Muhammad is the leader of the Islamic tower
movement, Alhamdulillah. So we did a television program there to get
things out, you know, on online, and you know what not, to get it
out to the people you know about the programs that we were doing.
And we had a special dinner
for the Dawah right for the call to Allah, and it was held on the
University of the West Indies campus. So this is not gang
infested area. Families could come out and everything you enjoy, just
like going to a to a dinner here in Toronto. And surprisingly
enough, that the sister, who's speaking on the right, right with
the white khimar, she is a new Muslim. She actually accepted
Islam about four months ago,
and she is now the only Muslim in a Catholic school.
And she is an activist. She has, you know, like some people, just
have that spirit from before they were Muslim. So she has become an
activist. She has put on hijab in the school, and they tried to stop
her, but it's against the law to stop so the Islamic tawa movement
wrote a letter, you know, to the school, and they allowed her to do
it.
And she is an activist, and Inshallah, you know, she will be
one of the strong activists in the spread of Islam. You see, the Dawa
movement is usually
headed by people who are new Muslims, right? Because new
Muslims have more of a feel toward giving out to their families and
their society itself. Okay, so Alhamdulillah,
that was it was a very nice dinner there, and the topic that we used
was why the world needs Islam, okay?
And there were some non Muslim people who were invited also to
the program. So this is a positive message,
okay, so despite negativity, the positive message of dawah, why
does the world need Islam? And you can see different types of Muslims
there, African Muslim. The brother in the middle is actually British,
a British person,
philosopher type, and he came married a Trinidadian, and he
lived in Trinidad, you know, for many years. So you'll meet many
different types of people there in the.
Muslim community. So the next program that we had was dealing
with Palestine, because, again, if to be relevant, you have to deal
with issues, you know, in light of what's happening in the world. And
mashed al Hadi is one of the strong supporters of Palestine
resistance there and in place called charlieville. And so the
topic was Palestine and the Muslim ummah,
Alhamdulillah. It was well attended our program there, and
the Trinidad has been so active in the Palestine movement
that
the the ambassador, Palestinian, Ambassador to the west, visited
Trinidad. They had big demonstrations. And even this
person, you may you follow United Nations, Riyad Mansour, he, he's
the representative of Palestine in the UN. So you'll see him always
making reports to the UN. He visited Trinidad. Okay, so that's
how much ground support they have there, and they're planning
another major gathering with the representative of the Palestinian
people in the West, who's now living in America, will be
visiting there in Trinidad. Okay, so that that was again, it's all
part of Dawa, right? It's all part of calling to the good and
forbidding evil. So we set up different Dawa boots. So this is
outside Dawa, and this was in we in our in place called Arima and
San Juan, we set up the boots. So this is a typical supermarket.
This is your Metro supermarket. This was extra, right? Extra. And
so the owner
very cooperative, you know, Muslim brother. So he allowed the IDM to
set their booth right near the main entrance.
So as people come in and out, you can see the sister there,
you know, to the left there. So this is what the table looks like.
And the table is there with active people trained in how to explain
Islam. And, you know what not, literature is there. And that goes
on all throughout the weekend. Active dawah is going on. And,
yeah, so so that that was a very positive program. They again,
that's part of outreach as part of the outreach program.
Now downtown, again, I had another interaction with the an afro
Muslim community they had downtown, and the brother on the
on the right there with his family, Kwesi Atiba. He lived in
Toronto for a long time. He was part of our community, and he's
one of the leaders within this Masjid there. The unfortunate
thing is, it's right down the street from the Jama Masjid. I
remember the gang territory, right? So they fall sort of right
in the area there. So, you know, they have to do a lot of work to
get themselves back together.
And yeah, so we had a very strong interaction to discuss how to come
out of ourselves.
The next day, we had a program in a place called enterprise, and
this is an area called chaguanas. Now the enterprise area is
infamous for the gangland warlords. It is one of the
toughest places outside of Port of Spain. But alhamdulillah, many of
the young people from the gangs are embracing Islam,
and their families are open to Islam. So we held a program there
in the evening, and we invited the families, and we had food. It was
an open house
to, you know, to get people to understand what Islam is about.
Again, this is part of the program of outreach there in Trinidad,
okay? And we ended up we did a webinar online program, and it was
dealing with the Islamic solution to crime and social problems. So
this was something which was actually International. And we
even got input. One call came from Malaysia actually came to our
program, you know, and different parts of the world, you know, came
in. So that was very productive and active Alhamdulillah. And that
was, you know, the end of our of our week, they continue with the
booth. The booth will continue on. Inshallah. You know, as time goes
by, so this is an example of the call
to Islam, which is something which is necessary for for people in our
community to do
it is fared.
It, and it is very important for us to be, at some point, involved
in the Dawah spreading the message out to people. The Prophet saws
Alam, he said, Prophet Muhammad said, belly huani, wala ayah,
spread this message from me, even if it is one verse or just one
sign, spread it to other people, and that's not just standing on a
booth. You can even spread Islam at school, you know, at work, just
by being a Muslim and interacting with people and not be afraid to
talk about your faith. Okay, so this was an idea of the of the
trip that we took there. I want to open up the floor for any feedback
or any questions that anybody may have concerning this Islamic
Awareness Week in Trinidad and Tobago.
Okay, so the floor is open for any questions that anybody may have.
Yeah, if you
give dawah and
you good at giving dawah, and they have the intention of being
sometimes they don't. It
doesn't come off that way, and they end up pushing people away
from Islam. Is that a sin, or is it
just, you know, the Prophet said your deeds are based on your
intentions. So if the person intends to do good and it doesn't
come off right,
it's not a sin, but hopefully that person would learn to correct
themselves, but it's but the intention really is the important
thing, and part of you know, dawah can just be being friendly to your
neighbor,
that's all. It's not a lecture.
And then your neighbor, you're friendly, and say, on Eid day, you
send over some food to your neighbor, and the neighbors say,
Oh, why you? Is this a special day? And then you explain about
what Eid is and what Islam that's dawah.
You see. So dawah can be done in many different ways, but the ones
who are actually actively going out,
you know, to preach, should have some understanding of how to do
it.
They they should have some training,
because you can do
anti Dawa in a sense, it's like a negative form. You can give the
wrong image,
in a sense. So the person, if the person's actively involved with a
movement or anything, they should have some training as to how to
carry it up. But everybody can do Dawa in their own way.
Okay, floor is open question.
You know, basically by going through a course, you know, where
you learn the theory of Dawa, what it means, and, you know, whatever,
and then some practical engagement, like that Dawa booth,
that sister there, that was the first time she was ever outside in
a Dawa booth.
She looked like she was, like, relaxed, but it was her first time
out. Okay? So she will learn, she will interact with people, and she
will learn how to do this. It's like practical training, right?
It's apprentice training
and but dower goes to a high level. I mean, I graduated in
Medina. The college was called Kalia to Dawa wa Sula din. So it's
the College of Dawa and the principles of religion. So a
person who comes out of that is trained in the science of what
Dawa actually is,
okay. So you can go to you be on different levels. But again, you
don't have to be a scholar to call to Allah.
Floor is open for any other general questions anybody may
have.
Can Can you look online there and see if there's any
the food? You know, people say, did you eat your doubles? You
know, everybody talk Trinidad the doubles, right? But doubles is not
actually normal Trinidadian food,
okay? Doubles is an invention that came along. It's a fast food
invention,
right? So,
like this priest who had accepted Islam, and, you know, he was
Irish, Rahim Hola, he had passed away, but one time he told us he
was in Italy,
and he went to a famous Italian restaurant,
and on the door it said, welcome
here. Here. There is no pizza.
No pizza is here,
okay? Because Americans and other people that you want your pizza,
right? Pizza is not, pizza is like, you know, samosas is like,
what you eat before you eat your meal.
Pizza is not the meal, although, Alhamdulillah, we have some nice
pizza here at the night. But that's the that's the purpose of
pizza. It's something light, right? So.
Doubles is the same thing.
But you know, they say that when you're in the country itself, the
food is going to taste different than outside.
So inside you really get the real Trinidadian food, which is special
in the way that is made. No any other questions are there online?
Floor is open. So I want to open up the floor for any general
questions that anybody has, you know, concerning Islam, general
questions a few while
back,
you mentioned that you know no one when you're praying, no one should
be walking in front of you, right? What about animals like, we have a
cat who will often, like, Come
and try to sit on the front of us while we're praying. And I'm just
wondering, like, how much I should be, like, pushing them away. Yeah,
I mean something like, like a cat is okay. Cats are considered to
be, you know, the ones who move around amongst us and whatever,
and
it's okay. And maybe even a baby, your child, might come and look
and look at you, and that's okay. And it is said that Hassan
Hussain, the Prophet's
grand children, they as two young boys he was praying, and they
would come climb on his back
and fall down on the ground and everything while he's making
Salat. So that's okay. But the main thing is that a person now an
adult person, okay, if it's a dog, I don't expect to have a dog going
in front of you,
something like that. You would want to stop you know a dog, but
you you set up a sutra so, so either you pray near a wall, or
you have an object that's a little bit off the ground, that sutra
should always be in front of the person who's leading Salat. And if
you're praying by yourself, you're the Imam, including sisters. So
you should have a sutra in front of you as well when you are making
Salat, and then you protect that area there. But for things like
cats, this is generally, there's no problem with
that.
There's one tradition where
the person's making Salat,
the Prophet, one of his companions and a scorpion came. So he broke
the Salat, and then took something and then hit the scorpion, and
then continued the Salat.
So, and he didn't break a Salat. So you can do things in your
Salat, right? As long as it's something that Scorpion, he had to
deal with that because it was coming in his area, his zone,
right? So, so, you know, Salat is more flexible, you know, than many
people think. Question, where can I go to identity
or
like,
see a see, yeah, like, do
research about Hadith. So what you'd have to do is either join a
class that specializes in Hadith, somebody who's trained, you know,
in Hadith. So you would go to a scholar or a class, you know, in
some somewhere, and then you take a course in Hadith, because you
have to learn
what is called mustala Hadith. And that is, you first learn, you
know, the the science of Hadith. What are the what are the
technical terms? So just like you studying chemistry or biology or
anything, there's technical term. So you got to learn the technical
terms, and you got to learn all that. Then you go into the actual
study of the Hadith themselves. Okay, so it's a science, so you'd
have to go to somebody who's trained, you know, in the science,
in in a hadith class, you know there, this is the what you have
to do. You can't do it randomly by yourself,
and you have to watch out for the Google check Google or artificial
intelligence. You know it doesn't you know they don't have
qualifications in this area. Okay. Floor is open for any other
general questions. Anybody else?
Yesterday? I'm sorry, but
yesterday you were saying, in terms of, like, the qualifications
to adopt, I have to have a basic understanding of the principles.
But sometimes you find
that when people non Muslims, ask questions, they're asking about
very delicate issues, or, like, controversial issues specifically.
Yeah. So for me, feel uncomfortable doing Tawa, because
I feel like I don't know how to answer those I might do more harm
than good, like,
what Maggie was saying. What advice do you have? Well, you
know, according to our traditions, the beginning of real knowledge is
to be able to say, I don't know.
And one of the great skulls, Imam Malik rahimu Hola, was asked 50
questions on one sitting, and 46 times he said, I don't know the
answer. This is one of the greatest imams in Islamic history.
He wasn't sure. So if somebody asks you a difficult question,
then you say, Well, I don't have the answer right now. I.
But I can, I can check somebody, I can get the answer for you. Okay,
so they don't try to answer. That's a mistake, and it's not a
weakness to say that you don't know, because even great scholars,
sometimes they don't know.
And if you don't know, you don't want to say something wrong you
know about what Islam is. So we just flow with it. And, you know,
we're smooth in doing the Dawah, in terms of the real training,
this is for somebody who is sort of like officially doing dawah.
They're going to an area and they're confronting, but the
normal, everyday dawah itself being good to your neighbor.
Everybody can do that.
And one good thing about reaching out with Islam is that it helps
you with your own Islam.
Because if, for instance, if you say prayer is really important in
the life of a person, you're saying this to a non Muslim, then
a voice is going to be in the back of your head. Did you make your
prayers,
and if and if you not, you don't, you're a hypocrite.
So that will help you,
it'll actually help you to do things that you might not normally
do.
So dawah has a lot of benefits, and the Prophet, peace be upon
him, said that if Allah guides a person on your hands to Islam. It
is better than the most valuable possession in the world. It
is better than, he said, The Red camel, meaning the most valuable
possession on Earth, if one person is guided. And he said, if a
person accepts Islam based on your, you know, interaction. And
then they come into Islam through you,
every good deed that they do, you get a blessing for it. And it
doesn't decrease from their blessings.
So every all the good that they're doing,
you're going to benefit from it. So there's great rewards in being
involved in dawah, and a lot of things that are happening in the
world today. A lot of it is distractions to distract us from
our real mission.
And there are forces that want to keep us busy on other different
things. So we don't do the Dawah. We don't really spread the true
message of Islam to the world.
No any other general questions. Anybody has. Floor is open? At
what point does a person visit Juma Salah if you come late and
catch the last recon the two? Does
that complete your
career? If you come late and they're still in the Salat, yeah,
and you catch the last rakat. So you still caught the Prius, you
still caught the Juma.
Where you don't is when they make Taslim, when they do salams, and
they're finished. Now you have to make salats of Doha, four rakats,
right? You can't do your own little Jumah, right? No, you
missed it. Some masjids will have another Jamaat for Jumah, because
they have so many people. But if you miss that Jummah, then do the
Hus next question for those who are
learning about Islam, one of
the most common forums is through online debates, where heated
conversations, what are your views on these approaches? Yeah, to be
honest with you, I would avoid a lot of these online debates. To be
honest with you, because there's a lot of wasted time that is done
ill feeling is there, and sometimes the wrong information is
being passed out. So I would spend more time in learning about Islam
like we have the new Muslim Academy. And, you know, you know,
different positive websites learn things the life of the prophet saw
them. You know, whatever, the debates generally are not that
productive, because when you debate somebody,
really does that person embrace Islam based on your debate?
Because they is like enemies, right? You're fighting each other
with words. So it's very rare that a person's going to embrace Islam.
Okay? There are some times when the Muslim community is
challenged,
when somebody comes to the Muslim and challenges them.
In that case, debaters will come from us in order to defend us.
Like one of the great, most famous, Al shamed, did that, Rahim
Allah of South Africa.
You know, he was a great. He took Islam out to stop the
missionaries, because Christian missionaries were knocking on
Muslim doors, like sometimes you may have Jehovah's Witnesses
knocking on your door.
So they were knocking on Muslim doors, and somebody had to respond
to them. And so he started a system of debate.
But many of these debates, you know, is a waste of time. You.
And they're talking about minor issues, and sometimes it goes into
personality, and that's not really the message of Islam.
That's not how dawah was done in the time of Prophet Muhammad SAW.
So I would avoid most of these debates. Best thing when you see
people get negative and ugly and whatnot. So it's a waste now
you're wasting your time.
Okay, many times people will speak with emotions and not with their
intelligence, so try to avoid it. Now you mentioned some flashes
July again at
a later time. So when
is the is there appropriate time to do? Juma? Yes. I mean, it's
basically the
zawal. It starts when, right after the sun is at its highest. It
starts at the early time there, and it goes to the Doha, Salat,
till ASA, so all the way to LASA Juma could be done. There's even
some reports of it being done before the Zohar.
And in some countries you might live in, in Bahrain and some other
countries, sometimes they do it. In the Hanbali school, they do it
very early, you know, you know, just at the time of noon, or just
before, just before, not exactly noon, just before, but generally,
you know, they can go on like some masjids. Have three jumaas.
So as long as you're not an ASA, it's okay. You can do another one
if you have to.
Okay any other final questions on anybody else? Yeah. Is the history
of the Muslims in Panama similar to the ones in Trinidad and
Tobago, the Muslims in Panama, it is. It's different, because there
were not so many records that you know there in Panama as it was
there in in Trinidad
and so and the Panama has got the canal, the Panama Canal, and a lot
of Muslims came during that time period. So it's not the same
Central America. Central America is different than you know what
happened in some of the islands
in Panama.
Okay, so Inshallah, we'll close off the class and we'll continue
on. Now. We want to start the class next week at seven o'clock.
That's the time we originally had, and that that is the time, that's
the best time, because Mother of is coming in now just after eight,
right? So if we start at seven, you can get the basic class, you
know, in before eight. So we will go. We will not be at 730 we'll
put a message on seven o'clock inshallah next week. And for those
online, have a safe journey, journey home. Wad Alhamdulillah.
Rabbi Lamin was salaam war akumatul AhI wa barakatuh.