New Muslim Corner – The World Before Prophet Muhammed
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Channel: Abdullah Hakim Quick
Series: Abdullah Hakim Quick - New Muslim Corner
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AI Generated Summary ©
The speakers discuss the importance of understanding the "has" of Islam, rather than just the "has" of the person. They emphasize the need to go back in time and look at the world in the way it was before Jesus Christ. They also discuss the historical significance of the influence of the world and the western Empire, as well as the historical and political differences between the first and second groups of people in ancient Arab culture. The upcoming week's class for Islam emphasizes the importance of the New Guinea and Old Guinea laws, while also addressing the "we call b electrical" label.AI Generated Transcript ©
All praise are due to Allah, Lord of
the worlds,
and peace and blessings be showered upon
all of the mighty prophets
from the beginning of time, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed,
given to their companions as well to the
day of judgment. As to what follows, my
beloved brothers and sisters,
Assalamu alaikum,
Alhamdulillah.
This is a continuation
of our sessions,
that we call the new Muslim Corner.
And the idea of this
is not necessarily
only to be a formal class,
but it is really a chance to, learn,
about Islam for those who are interested in
Islam and also for those who have recently
embraced Islam.
And we find that,
that group of people,
who has a
really great desire,
to become Muslim.
They are very interested.
But the unfortunate thing is in many cases,
they are lacking information.
And
enthusiasm
by itself,
is not enough
really to be totally successful in this world
because there's a lot of complexity in the
world. There's a lot of confusion,
in the world. And so therefore,
the object of this, session, these sessions,
you know, is to
clarify,
things that are not so clear
to answer questions,
and to provide a foundation,
you know, a basis
for a person,
who is
making this change,
which is a major change in their life,
to embrace Islam. Because as we have learned,
Islam is a way of life. We say
a deen.
So a way of life is not just
your religious beliefs,
but it is your lifestyle.
It's the way you do business.
It it impacts your world outlook.
So it's important to have
a solid foundation,
in the
pure teachings right from the beginning
as how Islam,
began.
Because today, Muslims make up close to 2,000,000,000
people
and with many different cultures, many different understandings.
So it's it's important to have that base.
What we notice also,
in this class, and this has been over
the years,
is that there are a number of Muslims
who, although they were raised in Muslim families,
they embrace Islam later in life.
When I say embrace, I mean, get serious
about it.
So it's not just a cultural practice,
something that my father does or my mother
does
or that we, as a people, we do
this,
but it really becomes a driving force,
in their life.
So this class really is
a chance,
for
understanding.
And
we have been looking at
in the past few months,
the basic,
what is called Kalima,
And that is,
There is no God but Allah,
nothing worthy of worship
except Allah the creator. And
Mohammed is
his messenger.
And we found out
that
this concept or this,
this phrase is deeper than what it appears
to be.
Because when we talk about
there's nothing worthy of worship,
no deity,
then we're talking about
everything in creation.
And it's not just,
something abstract,
but we're talking about anything
that would
take the ultimate love
and fear,
of a person,
anything that
consumes their understanding that they believe is a
creative force in the universe. And when when
we say,
we are negating this.
We're not negating the fact
that there are powerful things.
No doubt about.
There are powerful
aspects of the universe.
For instance, the sun
is the most powerful,
object in the universe.
And because of that,
human beings,
from early times
worship the sun.
The sun gives life.
The sun is brightness.
The sun is the most powerful. So therefore,
people naturally,
they connected
the power of the sun
to creation.
And so many
cults and religions were formed,
you know, based upon sun worship.
And that went also for for the moon
and those who lived
in areas where there was a large river.
Then
worship came to the river itself because the
river gave life.
You'll find people who live near mountains,
felt that that mountain was the most powerful
thing. So what we are talking about
is submission
to not to the created things,
but to the creator.
And the creator is not male or female.
We I use the word he,
but that is a a construct based upon,
you know, the language.
K? But when we talk about Allah, we're
not talking about a human being.
We're not talking about male and female,
but we're talking about the creative force
that existed
when there was nothing else.
So you can go to all the religions,
to all the different philosophies, whatever.
But
if they are going back in time,
there is a point where
creation as we know it
began.
And so that force
behind the creation,
that is what we we are that's the
concept
that we have of, Allah.
So, therefore, the first part of the Kalima,
is
that there is no deity, nothing worth worthy
of worship
but the creator.
And that is something that is shared by
people
throughout the planet.
Even different religions
have this concept of a
cosmic being,
an ultimate deity. They say, on the African
continent, that's one of the unique things about
the African continent
is that every language in Africa
has a word
to express
the creator,
a specific word for the creator.
That's something that is unique,
but you'll find it
throughout the world
in different,
languages, different constructs.
And
whether you're in South America or China,
India, wherever you are,
this concept is there.
The second part of the kaliman,
the second part of the basis of Islam
is Muhammad o Rasoolallah,
peace be upon him. And that is that
Muhammad is
the messenger of Allah, the final
messenger.
And so we believe that messengers came
to every nation and every tribe.
Prophets came to China,
to India,
to Africa, to Europe,
to the Americas.
Every nation at one point in time,
had a warner.
A message came
to all of the human beings.
And we look at prophet Muhammad, peace be
upon him, as not the first messenger of
Islam.
You know, sometimes they say for monotheistic
religions, there is Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
as though they are 3 different things, but
that's not our concept.
Our concept is that from the time of
Adam,
peace be upon him, the first human being,
that is when
Islam began.
Because it's not a word based upon
a language group
or based upon a particular tribe.
It's something universal.
So
the
kalima
is expressed in
Arabic.
The last,
prophet,
we believe, came from the Arabian Peninsula, to
the Arabs of the Arabian Peninsula,
not only to them,
but
to the whole of the world.
And that is something unique.
People who are embracing Islam
or those who were raised in
what you could call cultural Islam
sometimes have a difficulty
in understanding the second kalimah
because you need to know who that person
is.
And when you are embracing that person,
you need to understand
the circumstances
around
that person's life,
what happened,
how the revelation came,
and how the revelation impacted,
this individual
and his society and then the rest of
the world.
And when a person has that under understanding,
it is easier,
for them to see,
the fact that this
is truly
a messenger of god.
And we discussed in our previous session that
there are certain individuals, historians,
different intellectuals
who wanted to
categorize people.
And Kevin Haught, did a book on,
the most,
influential people in history.
So they looked at the different leaders,
in different parts of the world,
And they looked at the great leaders of
China,
the great leaders of India,
the Romans,
the Greeks,
the Egyptians,
the different,
African nations,
even the Americas. Who are the most
influential people, male or female?
And they
they made a list. Kevin Hart leading this
think tank,
made a list, and they were really looking
at it not just from a spiritual point
of view,
but it is really like influence,
who influence people the most.
And when they did this list without having
any religion
as their base,
they came with to the fact that, that
Mohammed,
Ibn Abdullah
was number 1
because they could not see.
They could not find anybody
who had an influence in the way that
this
one individual
and the movement that he began
has had with the whole of the planet
Earth, and
that was something that was done by secular
people.
So
it is important for everybody to do the
study like what,
Kevin Hart and those in intellectuals did,
to get closer
to prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him,
and to look at his life. So we
want to give you a general,
understanding
of the importance of the second kalima
and what it actually means. So in order
to do that,
we need to go back in time,
and to look at the world in the
way that it was
before the time of prophet Muhammad, peace be
upon him.
So he was born in 5 70
AD.
So we wanna look at the world
before his time to a certain extent
to understand
the powerful nations
and what he was actually coming into,
at that time.
And
there was a great, philosopher
known in Persia and,
that eastern part of the world.
His name was, Manny.
And and Manny said that there were,
a number of great nations
in the world,
and he listed 4 great powers on earth.
And this is somewhere around
the 4 100
3, 4 100
AD,
and he listed the fact that the Roman
Empire
was a great,
empire influence in the world.
There was also,
the Persians,
Persian Empire,
and
there was the great,
Chinese,
empire,
and the 4th was the Ethiopian Aksumite,
empire
that was in the region of of the
Red Sea. So he saw that these were
the great powers of the world.
In the same way that people look at
the world today,
things, of course, are changing rapidly.
But when they look at the influence of
the world and they say still
that,
America is,
the greatest power on earth.
And when they talk about
the president of the United States,
they say,
he's the leader of the free world.
So they use this.
And, really, they're they're basing it upon weapons.
Maybe before, it had another kind of influence,
but they're basing it upon military power, economic
power.
But the world is changing
because China now is rising.
The nations they call the BRICS,
nations, Brazil, Russia,
India,
you know, China, South Africa.
Other nations are rising. The US dollar is
actually falling.
So the influences are changing in the world.
And
as time goes by,
you actually have to have different understanding of
the map of the world.
For instance, if you were
a student,
30 years ago or so,
and they you had a map of the
world, then you would see,
the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union. That's the largest country on
earth
that would be.
Okay? But the Soviet Union actually fell,
and so they had to do new maps.
So you will see a new map
of the world that just had Russia.
So there's Russia and there's other states
that used to be part of Russia,
but they're not.
So you literally,
if somebody had the Soviet Union in their
mind and they're looking at the map today,
they get confused.
So this is like what you call a
chronological
map.
It's a time based map.
So in order to understand the world,
we need to go back,
to that time,
in the first few centuries,
before prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon
him.
And so,
one of the most powerful empires,
and, you know, I'm dealing mainly with
you could call the middle,
empires,
not so
much the extremes like China
or,
America, because there was a great empire in
Peru,
the Inca.
There's the Inca civilization
was a major
civilization,
but
the middle part of the world,
the Romans.
And
this is important for us
because
the prophet,
peace be upon him, is coming in Arabia
and probably the most powerful nation,
were the Romans.
And the Romans, Rome is divided into 2
parts.
There is what is known by some as
western Rome. That was the original Rome.
That was based in Italy.
So Rome was its capital.
Okay? And they spread out. And at that
time and you're talking about, a few 100
years BC,
right, up until a few 100 years AD,
the Western Roman Empire.
That was the most powerful empire on earth.
Like, 5,000,000 square kilometers,
they controlled,
and
nobody
could could conceive
of that empire
falling.
But, eventually,
it it started to get corrupted.
Internally, it had corruptions. Externally, it had corruptions,
until finally, it was attacked by its own
slaves.
The people who they had enslaved,
you know, in their empire turned against them.
And it's interesting how words are actually used,
because when people think of slave
in this time period,
they generally think of an African person.
Okay? Especially here in North America,
you might think slave, and then you think
of slaves in Africa because of Atlantic
slave trade, but that was not with the
Romans. Slave
comes from the word Slav.
You know, like, Yugoslavia,
Slavic people.
Czechoslovakia,
Slavic.
So the Romans had enslaved blonde haired, blue
eyed people,
you know, from the Balkans and these regions.
They were the main slaves.
So so there were so many Slavs that
were slaves.
This became the word for slave,
But they turned against them,
and other people turned against them as well,
and they started to fall. But before they
went down,
power in Rome shifted to the eastern side.
There's another big city that was coming up
known as Constantinople.
It's now in this world today, because remember
maps change. Right? It's now Istanbul.
You will not see Constantinople on the map.
Okay? It's now in Turkiye.
It is Istanbul. But before, it was Constantinople,
and that became the capital of the Eastern
Roman Empire.
Some say the orthodox amongst Christians.
There's Roman Catholics, and then there's orthodox,
like Greek orthodox,
Russian orthodox, like the eastern side. Okay?
So
the Rome that's mentioned in
the Quran, which is the book of scripture
of the Muslims,
is a chapter
in the Quran called Rome
that is dealing with Eastern Roman Empire.
It's not dealing with Italy.
Okay? And and the Romans at that time,
their language, their main language was Greek.
They were Greeks.
That was the base.
They use Latin,
because of the
scriptures that they had and their text,
but they were basically,
they were Greeks.
Okay? So that's one of one of your
great empires.
K. And this is sort of gives you
a map,
showing you,
the extent of the the Byzantine they call
them Byzantines,
Byzantium.
K. It's the Byzantine Roman Empire.
Okay. So this and this is the dominant
force in the Mediterranean region.
Okay?
And you'll see on the right,
there is the Sasanid
Empire.
That is the Persian Empire.
So this is really,
the 2nd great empire,
you know, that we want to look at,
as we go along.
But this is the Rome.
Now one of the things that happened in
Rome,
is that,
there were a number of different religions.
The Western Roman Empire, you remember their religion
was based upon,
a type of paganism.
They had many different gods,
sun god,
moon god.
You had different,
types of deities.
Okay? So this is the basic,
Roman beliefs.
You also had people,
who believed in Mithra
or Mithras,
who they believe was the son of God,
and he came down to earth and he
died for the sins of people.
Alright. Sounds familiar. Right?
Because this is how Christianity was constructed. Right?
For Midras.
He was a cult
at that time of there.
And there are other cults as well.
But during,
that early time period in the shift from
BC to AD,
a prophet arose
amongst the children of Israel.
And,
this is Jesus,
He rose up as part of the children
of Israel. He was teaching the law of
Moses.
And he came, and he was known as
Al Masih
or as the Messiah.
And his followers
were known as Nazarenes.
So there was no word Christian being used
at that time because they were all Jewish,
all of them.
So these were the Nazarenes that we call
in in in Arabic, in the Quran, they
call.
So you'll hear this word being used,
in Arabic. So they were the they were
the early followers of Jesus. You could say
in a sense we would say that they're
like Muslims,
because the word Muslim only means one who
submits to god.
Has nothing to do,
with the particular prophet.
So the Nazarenes then,
their base was Jerusalem,
And,
one of their,
associates,
his name was Saul. He was Jewish too,
but he disagreed with them.
And he turned them into the authorities. He
became like their enemy.
And,
he had,
a a a type of
vision.
He was on the Damascus road.
Okay? And he had a vision.
And he said that
he saw Christ coming to him. Now this
happened
after
Jesus was supposed to have been crucified.
So this is after the so called crucifixion.
We, of course, as Muslims believe that he
wasn't actually crucified. He was made to appear
that it did happen. But this is this
was Saul,
and
he,
changed his name,
from Saul.
He changed his name to Paul.
So Paul is the one known by Christians
today.
And if you go to a Christian
church and listen to the the preachers,
they will quote Paul sometimes more than Jesus.
This is how important this person was.
Although he
was not
a follower of Jesus.
K? He was not one of the disciples,
But he knew the disciples,
and he came amongst them.
And,
but he had different concepts.
Okay?
And he started to teach something different
because the disciples were teaching follow the law
of Moses.
God is 1.
Stay stay strict to the law.
He started to teach that the message of
Jesus
was not only
his teachings. You can mix it up.
So you can take from other religions,
as well,
and we will also teach
to non Jews.
The non Jews are known as,
Gentiles.
The Gentiles, the Goyim.
We say in Arabic.
Okay? So
Paul was teaching, you can go to the
Gentiles.
That was totally new because Jesus, peace be
upon him,
came clearly, and it's in their old testament
that he came to the children of Israel.
He did not come
to the non,
children of Israel.
Of course, these terms are all big,
political terms now. Right?
This is heavy politics here,
but it's important for us to have an
understanding
because there is a difference between
there's a difference between
up the political movement of Zionism
and the Jewish people.
There's a difference between the 2. It's important
to understand,
and it's a very important discussion that went
on in New York, not to divert too
much,
but, a a famous,
woman,
Naomi Klein is her name,
and she's a liberal Jewish leftist,
you know, scholar.
And she said that,
in the same way
that
some of the Jewish people, when Moses went
to the mountain to get got the 10
commandments,
he came back and they were worshiping a
calf.
They worshiping a golden cow, like
okay. And and he threw the scriptures down
on them. He was really angry. She said
very heavy statement,
which today only somebody from them could say
and survive.
But she said they're worshiping a new calf
today,
and that is Zionism.
This is a heavy statement,
really heavy statement.
She said that's the golden calf.
And so the Jewish people in their seder
and their Passover
ceremony that they did in New York, they
say we divorce ourself from this.
This is not us.
Okay?
Now going back to
where we were,
our understanding
because when we talk about Israel,
that's why you see many people don't don't
even like to use the word for political
entity
because Israel
is
Jacob. Jacob
was a prophet,
and,
peace be upon him. That was his nickname.
And that's in the Quran itself.
That word is actually being used, not a
political word.
Okay? So Jesus's message,
he was teaching directly to
the children of Israel.
That was his message. Paul changed it.
Okay? And he opened it up. He was
rejected
by the companions of Jesus.
And but he he continued his message,
and, you know, he went into Europe.
And when his teachings went into Europe,
the European
followers, the the pagan followers there,
they started to call
Paul's people Christians,
meaning followers of Christ.
Okay? Because this was not the original teachings
of Jesus. They were Nazarenes.
See, it's important to distinguish between the 2.
They were Nazarenes.
But Christians are different
because Christianity
later on
took different forms,
especially when
the greatest ruler
of the Eastern Roman Empire. Remember Rome, now
Byzantine. Right?
His name was Constantine,
and Constantine was the one who founded or
or or or built up Constantinople.
It's named after him,
city of Constantine.
And Constantine
was a sun worshiper,
but he was a politician at the same
time.
And so he wanted to unite everybody together
so they'll all be in one new hybrid
religion, this new form.
Everybody can be satisfied
within it. Right?
And so,
he he he
put it together with his scribes and his
learned people, and they decided to use as
the main symbol,
the cross.
And the original crosses,
one of the oldest
forms of the cross is the ankh,
which is used in ancient Egypt. This is
an Egyptian symbol.
It's called the Ankh. It's like a cross
with a loop on the top. Right?
And according to some of the sources,
and,
this is an outdated source, but I I
it it gives me the clearest information.
Today, we Google everything. Right?
But there was a a generation where there's
no Google. There was no Internet.
So you gotta go to the Encyclopedia Britannica
and other things like this. But
going back to this old, form of
information, it said the use of the cross
as a religious symbol in pre Christian times
was almost universal.
It was used all over the place
and often connected with nature worship.
It was the symbol of eternal life
of nature worship.
That's what the cross was.
Had nothing to do with the teachings of
Jesus.
And if you just logically look at it,
Jesus was Jewish following the law of Moses.
They don't have a cross.
They don't have anything to do with this.
K. So this is how it it it
it came together,
in this form.
The important thing, though,
is that
Constantine
united Christendom.
He even got the Romans in Italy. He
got everybody in back of him. He took
over the whole Mediterranean,
and he built up
he built a huge house of worship called
the Hagia Sophia.
They may pronounce Hagia Sophia, but the Hagia
Sophia.
And this was the largest
house of worship maybe in the whole world
at the time.
And it's it's still there in Istanbul,
Turkey.
And,
so this was the base of that. Now
what he did was
he formed in order to to to solidify,
he formed a a group called
a series of
meetings,
and the most important one was in a
place called Nicaea.
It's called the council of Nicaea.
If you look at your map of of
Turkey, say, where's Nicaea?
It's not there. It's called Iznik.
So if you look at if you know
your map of,
it's Iznik.
That's where the council it was Nicaea.
They came together,
and
they took all of the scriptures that they
had.
Old testament,
new testament,
different writings, and they put it together in
a library
of religious
writings,
bibliotech.
And so and this was called we call
bible,
which in Latin means like a library,
which has Old Testament, New Testament, Psalms,
all types of things. And they decided that
the basic
the basic faith
would be trinity,
father, son,
holy ghost.
They were 31.
But there were some Christians that didn't believe
that. Some Christians
actually held on. They said, no. There's one
god.
Remember, they were originally Nazarenes. Right?
They have no they didn't have a trinity.
Pagan said trinities.
And the greatest of their teachers was called
Arius,
who was a Libyan
bishop.
He's from Libya,
but he was based on Alexandria, Egypt.
He refused to accept the council of Nicaea,
and he was poisoned
in 336.
But his followers
spread all over the place.
His followers went,
all over the Mediterranean, even into the Arabian
Peninsula.
And you're gonna see later on in the
life of prophet Muhammad,
he actually ran into,
some of the followers of Aries.
Okay? So this but this is the your
base now,
of one side. This is Rome.
Okay? So that's how the world
is set up in terms of religious beliefs,
and whatnot. That is what,
prophet Mohammed is coming into.
On the eastern side is
the Sassanid dynasty.
This is Persia.
This is an ancient,
belief
system.
Zoroastrianism.
And they have the worship of the sun,
and they believe that the sun manifests
itself through fire
through fire.
And they keep a a flame going all
the time
as part of their religious belief.
And that actually transferred. It's still being used
today. Can anybody think of where this flame
is used today?
Olympics.
The Olympics.
Think about that. Right? You know the Olympic
flame. Right? That didn't start with the Greeks.
It was the Persians.
This is Zoroastrianism.
Okay?
And it's still being used today.
The concepts are being used,
today of their belief in,
that god is, like, 2 sides.
There's a good side. There's a bad side.
This affected a lot of religions.
It even affects our youth today. You have,
like, Star Wars. Right?
And our youth date, we watch, you know,
Luke Skywalker and the force. Do you have
the good side of the force and the
bad side?
That's the Zoroastrian belief.
Okay? And, which showed itself in many different
so this was the Sasanid
Empire.
It it spread.
It was huge.
It even went to Egypt,
and you can see down in Yemen.
This is surprising. Yemen is a very important
place,
and the Persians controlled Yemen for a period
of time.
So there's a lot of cultures
in Yemen and in this in in Arabia.
So this Persian culture,
was a huge one. And at the time
of the,
it was the their leaders who called,
Sasanik.
Okay?
And their culture, again, as I said,
its symbols are all over the place.
Although, you know, we
we we change things around.
So that's another great power. The other the
the third power
influencing Arabia
directly.
Okay? I'm not talking about, you know, in
the extremes of China or, you know, South
America
or parts of Africa, lower. No.
In the middle area
was Aksum,
and this was,
we use the word Ethiopia,
but it's not just Ethiopia because you know
the map Ethiopia,
Eritrea,
There is there. There's also parts of the
Sudan, the Somalia.
This region there,
there was a powerful empire there.
They were so powerful,
and this is the base. That that really
was their their base,
of operations
at that time, the Aksumite empire.
Although this name is is not known by
only historians that really know this name today.
You might say, alright, Ethiopian or, you know,
Eritrean, you know, whatever.
But this was a great empire.
K?
And
the Arabs said,
they called it Al Habasha.
So that's the term that they use, Al
Habasha or Abyssinians.
So they're using this as a term. And
Al Habashah was so,
technologically
powerful
that
they even developed
the obelisk,
that they had the largest obelisk in the
world.
The Egyptians had the largest pyramids,
but the largest obelisk
was Ethiopian.
It's Africa.
Okay. So this is a different concept of
Africa too. Right?
This is a powerful nation.
Everybody has an obelisk now. All the different
nations want an obelisk. What's Toronto's obelisk?
CN Tower.
How many of you have been on the
have gone on the CN Tower? Everybody has?
Most Torontonians
these day don't even go up there. Right?
It's just like foreigners, visitors, right, who come
who go on the CN Tower.
But it used to be a really important
place to visit. Right?
But think about that. It's an obelisk.
It's it's something to do with you're showing
your technology.
And
most of the parts of the world will
do something like this,
to show how great and powerful they are.
You know, the Arabs now, you know, this
you see that you you know, there's huge
towers that are there and, you know, whatever.
So this obelisk,
this civilization is a Nile Valley civilization.
Okay? And
powerful civilization.
It was a naval power,
military
power.
Okay? It was
an amazing,
force
at the time of prophet Muhammad, peace be
upon him.
Okay? To the point where and you'll see
later
that,
at the time of the birth of the
prophet, peace be upon him, and we'll talk
a little bit about that.
You know, the Ethiopians
actually attacked Arabia.
And they had
in their army, they had elephants.
And this technologically
was
one of the most advanced things, like what
helicopters and now drones. Right? Drones are coming
in.
So at that time,
elephants.
This is an African nation.
So don't think that African people were all
slaves and all weak. That's not the case.
It was a powerful nation
that was there.
K? So this is what was surrounding the
Arabian Peninsula.
Now
to get to the Arabian Peninsula, some people
look at the map and they say Saudi
Arabia.
But Saudi is is Saudi is a tribe.
It's a tribe. It's not the name of
the actual place.
Because this tribe, Al Isau, they took over
the place.
But
it was known as the Arabian Peninsula, Jazirah
Al Arab.
The Arabian Peninsula.
Okay? And so this is where the Arabs,
lived.
And that's the question because, again, you say,
what is an Arab?
Again, times,
names change over time,
but it's important to understand what it is
because an Arab
is not a racial group.
It is not a particular cultural group, although
there are some
cultural aspects of it
that follow it.
Right? But it was more linguistic than anything
else. So the Arabs, according to historians, are
divided into 3 groups.
Okay? So this is important for us to
understand
who the prophet actually is.
Need to understand these points.
The first group is called Al Arab Al
Bayida,
and these were you could translate it to
say the perished Arabs.
So in ancient Arabian Peninsula,
there were ancient civilizations. Some of them we
run into when you study the Quran. You'll
see groups like Ad and Tamud.
Right? Mada and Salih.
So these are some of the groups like
Tasam and Amlaq.
But these groups, for the most part, have
perished.
Their languages are dead.
The closest
you can find to
one of the ancient languages
is a language spoken in Oman.
That's part of you know, like, with the
Emirates and then Oman. Right? The Omanis.
So if if you go amongst the Omanis,
I I visited there myself.
When you go there's
when they they can start speaking some of
them.
They start speaking this language. It's not Arabic.
It's something else.
Right? So this, Jabalia,
this is like an ancient Semitic language. This
is what is called
the Semitic language groups.
You see this word Semitic is politicized word
too. Right?
Because Semites
are different groups.
The people in the Arabian Peninsula, for the
most part, were Semitic,
the basis of the language.
And in Ethiopia,
one of the linguistic groups in Ethiopia is
Amharic,
which is a Semitic language.
There was also a language called Aramaic,
which was spoken at the time of Jesus.
Okay? But probably the oldest of the Semitic
groups is Arabic.
According to linguistic historian, this appears to be
the oldest. There's also the Hebrew language as
well,
which comes up. But when you say anti
Semitic today,
you are saying anti Jewish. Right? That's what
it means politically.
But this is really a ridiculous term if
you know history, because if you say a
Palestinian
or an Arab is anti Semitic, he's a
Semite too.
Both of them are Semites.
It's like a a cultural linguistic, you know,
group of people.
Okay? So but this group
perished.
The next group,
and these are some of the places, you
know, of that early group. The next group
is called. So these are the pure original
Arabs.
And
one of the famous group,
Right? But there's groups like Himya and Kahlan,
And you'll see them coming up.
How how important this group is. Even the
Kaaba itself. Remember you got the black stone,
and you have the Yemeni corner.
There's a corner of the Kaaba itself
in Mecca,
which is named after the Yemeni corner, the
people of this area. They are the original
Arabs.
And if you could take a base of
Arabic language,
it would be
Yemen,
who has the original you want to learn
Arabic
in its pure form
from the street languages of Arabic,
probably the best
the closest to that would be the Yemenis.
It would be part of Arabian Peninsula part
of Saudis too in the south, but the
Yemenis. The only problem with Yemenis is that
they speak too fast.
Right? But if you can slow them down,
right,
they're actually speaking
a a a pure dialect of Arabic
or the closest.
Okay? So this is.
And this is important. You're gonna see the
role that they play in the life of
the prophet. You're gonna see it.
Okay? So that's the 2nd group. The 3rd
group,
the 3rd group
I don't have it here.
Okay. The 3rd group is Al Arab Al
Mustariba.
Al Arab Al Mustariba.
That's the 3rd group.
Arab al Mustariba
are
the people who learned Arabic.
So when Islam spread,
even before,
people started picking up Arabic.
So people who come from Egypt,
Morocco,
Lebanon,
generally not original Arabic speaking people, unless they
migrated there. Their original languages were not Arabic.
And you can you can see that today.
If you start to learn Arabic, you'll see
that a person who comes from Morocco,
who speaks Arabic.
And if they speak to somebody from Lebanon,
both speak in Arabic, they can hardly understand
each other.
Just like if somebody who comes from,
Liverpool I don't know if you know UK
English. Right? But if somebody comes from Liverpool,
and speaks to somebody from Jamaica,
right,
they can't understand each other. When the Scottish
people I went to Scotland, and they're talking
to me, and I said, wait a minute.
Speak English, man.
Your Scottish accent. Right? It's heavy accent,
but it's English.
Same thing happened with Arabic.
So these people, like the Lebanese, the Moroccans,
Algerians,
unless they migrated there and have a family,
connection. They are.
But they're
Arabs,
but they actually learned,
the Arabic language. Okay? So this is the
basis of,
you know, Arabs. Now Arabian the peninsula itself
for the most most of the peninsula peninsula
is desert,
And you and it's in Yemen in the
south
and up toward Iraq
and along the coast.
In the in the center, you also have
some, some water and,
you know, some agriculture, but for the most
part,
the Arabian Peninsula was desolate.
And so the it was not one group.
It was based on tribes.
It was tribal society.
So the key thing is wherever you go,
it's your
tribe.
Your tribe will determine
whether you live or die in certain places.
Okay? And Yemen
was the the highest civilization of the amongst
the Arabs was the Yemenis,
although it's very poor now
because the oil money and whatnot.
But the Yemenis had the highest civilization.
Okay? Because they were trading
a very important,
substance.
This is frankincense.
So the frankincense
is like, you know, we have,
maple syrup. Right? You ever seen how maple
syrup is made?
Okay. It's not just poured in a bottle
and and and sold in metro.
You go to the maple trees and you
see it's a sap
dripping out the tree.
Okay? So, similarly, there was a sap dripping
out of these trees
in what is now,
you know, toward
it's Yemen, but it's the eastern side, Hadar
Amot
in these places.
And when you when it gets hard
and you cut it,
and then if you burn it,
it
the smell comes out of it.
And this smell actually fights bad odor.
You can use it to clean the air,
and it's got a distinct
sort of smell to it and aroma, and
it does something to the atmosphere.
And so people, religious people, especially wealthy people
who wanted to have high life,
no bad smells,
they wanted it. Religious people wanted to put
it in their temples.
So it became a really important product.
And you can carry this
anywhere. It's not gonna go bad.
You just chop it up. It's like hard
substance,
and you can carry it across the desert
anywhere. Then you have another form of this,
frankincense. It's gummy.
So they used to take this form,
and they chewed it.
And this was the first chewing gum.
You know
your prickly spearmints and your juicy fruits
and all the the things that you chew?
This was the first chewing gum
that people will use. It clears your mouth,
the smell from your mouth. Right?
So they became really rich
really rich
because the Romans, the Greeks,
Egyptians,
everybody wanted this. Ethiopians,
everybody wanted this to burn this type of
and it grew specifically
in the Arabian Peninsula.
Okay? And so there are a number of
stories that are there. There were great kings,
one called.
We don't have the time to go into
the story today, but for those of you
who want to go into it, advanced students,
there's a chapter in the Quran called Surat
al Buruj.
It's the story of the boy and the
king.
Right? And this is the story of and
we'll
as we go on, we will actually go
into this a little bit more.
Okay?
And
there was a great struggle that went on.
He's in Yemen.
And the king, who was actually Jewish,
and,
he refused to accept the teachings of Jesus
that was coming from Ethiopia
because the Christian teachings had gone up the
Nile into Ethiopia,
orthodox Christianity. He
refused it, and he put 20,000 Christians to
death.
Okay? And because of this,
the Romans,
Byzantines, they contacted Ethiopians who were Christians,
and they said,
we want you to attack Yemen.
So they
sent their armies. They had elephants and everything,
and they went over, and they destroyed Dunuas
and his and they took over Yemen.
And we're gonna talk about that a little
bit more. It's an interesting
part of the history, and it has something
to do with the life of prophet Muhammad,
peace and blessings be upon. Okay. Here's Arab
al Mustarim.
Right? It ended up in the wrong place.
So that's Arabized Arabs. Right?
Arabized Arabs.
K? Now
in conclusion for today's discussion,
why was this all important? How how does
how does it have
an impact on the life of prophet Muhammad
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam in 5 70 AD.
Remember the Ethiopians
had conquered Yemen
to defeat that Jewish king,
and they took it over, and they built
a a a church there called the.
And one of the Arabs pagan Arabs at
the time, though,
they defiled their church.
And so the leader of
the,
Ethiopians called Abraha,
he decided to attack
Mecca.
Mecca was the base.
Right? That was the base of Arabian society.
And he took his elephants, and he attacked
Mecca.
This is a major attack.
The Arabs are loose tribes. They do not
have anything like this. So he he attacked,
the Kaaba,
and we're gonna go into details about what
it is.
Right? And,
the Meccans retreated,
and Allah sent birds birds appeared.
And the birds dropped
stones from altitudes,
And it destroyed the army, and then disease
came in,
and they were defeated.
And that year,
5 70 AD,
that is called the year of the elephants.
The year of the why is it significant?
That is the year prophet Muhammad, peace be
upon him, was born.
K? So he was born into this scenario.
Right?
Romans, Persians, Ethiopians,
right, conquest of Arabia,
trauma.
He's a little baby, but his his society
was traumatized.
Okay. That's the year he was born.
And and and that gives you sort of
a
background
as to what was happening.
And this will help us to understand who
he is
and the impact
that he actually had,
in society.
So I wanna open up the floor for
any questions anybody may have,
concerning the world,
before prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon
him.
Floor is open for any general questions.
Online, do we have any, questions there?
Okay.
So this, you know, gives you a, you
know, a base, you know, of that. Now,
if there's no questions on this, I wanna
open up the floor for any general questions
anybody has,
because when Maghreb comes in about 10 minutes
or so, we're gonna that'll be the end
of the class For this week. So the
floor is now open for any general questions,
than anybody has concerning,
you know, Islam and the things that are
going on around you.
You. And this is an important time. If
you have questions during the week, write them
down.
And, you know, this is a chance, you
know, we'll give a chance at the end
of the periods.
Use the you know, for general question to
be asked. Flow. So when Christians talk about
the New Testament and the Old Testament, are
they talking about the time
about the the Old Testament being teaching that
Jesus, peace be upon him, and then the
New Testament being teaching the soul? No. Like,
what what they talk when they say the
Old Testament, this is what this is what
Moses. Oh,
goodness.
Right. Now for us, we separate it. We
say the Torah is for Moses.
The Psalms
is David. Right? Dawood.
And then the gospels, the angel is Jesus.
3 separate books.
So for them, what they did in Constantine's
time, they took the 3 books, the Torah,
what was left of it, the Psalms,
what was left of it, and the gospels,
and they put it in one book,
and they called it a Bible.
But the Christians in ignorance, the masses of
the Christian people are in ignorance because you
say them, do you believe in the Bible?
And they say, yes, every single word of
it.
But then when you go in the old
testament, you'll see some strange things that are
in there.
Really strange reports.
And and you'll see it being used by,
you know, even Zionist are used in old
testament, Amalek.
They're gonna kill all the Palestinians and whatnot.
So there's things that are in there that
are really strange.
Right? But the ignorant Christians don't know this.
So they tried they put it all together
in one book, but for us, it's it's
separated.
It's not the same. These are 3 different
revelations.
The other ones have been
superseded by the Quran itself.
That's the new version that has the other
ones are lost,
changed.
This is the new version to correct all
the other previous versions.
K?
And some of the followers
of,
Moses were in the Arabian Peninsula
as we will see.
There were Christians coming in and out,
so he was there.
So when the prophet, peace be upon him,
you know, you know, grew up,
he didn't meet Christians, so to speak. They
didn't come down to Mecca.
But on the on the roads, you will
see there were some monks
that were around in certain places.
K? So there were traces of this that
were left,
but he did not have a Christian teacher
who taught him the Bible, and then he
changed it around and rewrote for the Quran.
No.
They did not have this.
And the Jewish teachings,
that the the yahoo, the tribes of the
yahoo, they were in the north.
They were not in Mecca.
Okay? So all of these teachings that you
see,
did not come from going to school with
a monk or or with a rabbi.
Right? That that would be a misunderstanding.
Okay? Floor is open for any other general
questions that anybody has,
concerning this.
So this gives you a base, and
I want to emphasize this point here because
we're dealing with a lot of factors here.
And one of the factors is it's a
misunderstanding
about,
Ethiopian,
about African people.
This is a misunderstanding.
And that misunderstanding
is that African people were basically slaves.
Okay? And you'll see later on,
how this come, but that's not the reality
of the situation.
Yes. The the slaves at that time in
Arabia
could be African.
They could be Arabs.
They could be Persians.
They could be Europeans.
Anybody who you capture,
and you control them and sell them.
That's a slate. It's not connected to a
race.
Okay?
Because of the time period we live in,
we have been racialized. Our thinking is racialized.
Okay? But you'd have to come out of
this type of thinking
in order to really understand
what was happening there because it's hard to
come to grips with the fact. If you're
saying Ethiopians are weak people and slaves,
this is the elephants. This is one of
the 4 greatest empires on
earth. It's an African empire.
That's important thing to understand.
Okay. To really get this message,
you know, properly and connect it,
to the world we are living in today.
K. Floor is open for any general questions
anybody has.
On the point of the
slaves and slave trade,
I've heard a lot of people who refute
Islam. They talk about
the quote unquote Arabic slave trade or the
or the Muslim slave trade Right. They call
it. And that might be, like, post problem
if you want.
Can you touch on that? Yeah. I mean,
again, you know, as as I said, when
you go when you break through the barriers
of of our racialized minds,
slave the word slave is Slav.
Even the word you're
using
meant a European person
from the North captured by the Romans.
It was not a racial thing. And
Arabs and Africans themselves in Africa, there were
slaves.
In Arabia, there were slaves
In China, slaves.
Even in the Americas, everywhere in the world,
when you fought a nation and you captured
the people and you want them to work
for you, you control them. They're slaves. Even
in Europe itself,
there was wage slaves. You know, you had
the castles and the lords,
and they have what they call serf
serfdom.
The serfs were slaves.
They
stayed under a lord,
and they had to give their wages to
him.
So they were like economic
slaves.
So slavery took different forms,
throughout the world,
and not necessarily connected with Arabs, but this
is, again, part of a way of creating
a stereotype.
And it it's surprising as we will see
later on that when the Muslims were persecuted
in Mecca, the first place they went to
as
refugees
was Africa.
So they did not go into Africa as
slave traders.
They went there as refugees,
and we'll see later on that it was
the Aksumite king, the Ethiopian
king, who actually gave them sanctuary.
That's totally different story
than what you hear in this distorted stereotypical,
stories. Yes. There were Arabs,
you know, who were involved in the slave
trade like any other nation.
Okay? But it has been distorted
in order to have a propaganda against Islam.
Because if you turn somebody against Arabs,
not that Arabs of Islam, but if you
turn somebody against Arabs,
then you can turn them against the prophet
too
because he was an Arab.
Although the Arabs were his greatest enemies in
the beginning.
That that's why it's done like that.
It's a way of it's it's called stereotype.
Right? Which means you bring out a certain
quality of a negative quality, and you make
people think that's what this
all of them are like this.
Right? It's not the reality at the time.
Any other general questions, anybody has? Question on
that? Yeah. Was the Mali empire before or
after the coming of the? The Mali empire
was much later on.
So this was a a few 100 years.
It was like 400 years,
plus after after
the the coming of the prophet.
In West Africa, you know, there were,
nation there were empires there.
In ancient times, one called the empire of
Ghana, not the Ghana of today.
But there were,
empires
that were there amongst the Yodobo
and Ashanti and other people from ancient times.
Right? But not Mali itself.
Mali started after,
you know, Islam had spread into that region.
No.
The other general questions that anybody has?
So so this now is,
you know, the basis, and
it's important to understand that an Arab is
not a racial group.
And even the prophet himself said that an
Arab is one who speaks Arabic.
So if you speak Arabic,
then basically you're an Arab.
But you could divide it into this group
called Mustaraba.
So you're somebody who learned Arabic. Right? You're
not somebody who came from the original people
who were speaking it. That would be the
one from Yemen.
Right? But you're somebody who learned, you know,
Arabic
and became fluent in it.
And, generally, there's certain cultural things that you
might pick up, but the basis of it
is linguistic.
It's not racial
because there are different shades of color,
different features amongst the Arabs
up until today.
There are certain features that you'll see
in in their poetry in certain parts of
the Arabian Peninsula
that they like certain features and, you know,
whatever.
But that's one particular section.
Okay?
And this is important thing, and you'll see
how this plays plays out with the life
of the prophet, peace and blessings be upon
him.
This gives us the base.
Any final questions anybody has?
Yeah. How different is
the Yemen
Arabic dialect
from?
You know, it it is a dialect.
So they have different colloquial words, but it's
probably the closest.
They they they they didn't change around as
much.
You know, when I was learning Arabic, then
you say, you know,
What is your name?
Ismi Abdullah.
So I say Ma Ismuka.
Ma means what?
Name, you, your name. What is your name?
Instead of saying Masmooka, they say
or they say
still language.
See how that changed?
That's not original Arabic.
Just like how English changes too. Right?
But the Yemenis,
because they are originally
from that, they still maintain
their dialect is
fairly pure.
But like I say, they they talk really
fast,
but but their dialect is is really good.
Yeah.
Yeah. It was Ethiopian, not Yemeni army. It
was Ethiopian army. It was an African army
that came.
And, you know, it it says,
So the Quran says that they were
stoned with, baked clay.
So what that actually means, you know, at
that time in Arabia, you had to get
somebody in geology. Right? But it was like
baked clay,
you know, stone from the desert.
You know, a desert stone taken high altitudes
and then dropped, and, of course, it gains
weight as it comes down,
and it, you know, destroyed, you know, the
army. But it basically means baked clay.
So we will be closing the class now
where we're just about at the time, you
know, of the call to prayer. And we
will continue on now. We've reached the point
of the birth of the prophet. So now
you have the base
of the society. We want to look at
the prophet
himself,
his family,
what his background is,
and how important
that is,
you know, to understanding, you know, Muhammad or
Rasulullah,
which is the second part of our Kalima.
Okay? So it's important for us to get
familiar with this, to understand this, and this
will actually bring
more feeling. You know, when you say the
word and you understand, you'll have more understanding
about who you're talking about. So I leave
to have mercy on me and you.
to have mercy on me and you.