Abdullah Hakim Quick – The Muslim Corner – Holiday Myths
AI: Summary ©
The concept of tawhid is often considered a belief in a certain culture, but it is actually a process of renewal and understanding of one's life. The use of "tawhid," which refers to the universal spirit, is common in various media and language. The concept of sh arcans is discussed, including the holy day of the sun, trinity of ancient Egypt, and the cult of Horus. The importance of biology and growth in the naturalists' religious frameworks is also emphasized.
AI: Summary ©
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم، الحمد لله رب العالمين،
وأوصلي وأوصلم على سيد الأولين والآخرين، نبينا محمد
وعلى آله وصحبه، وبارك وسلم.
All praise is due to Allah, Lord of
the Worlds.
And peace and blessings be constantly showered upon
our beloved Prophet Muhammad, his family, his companions,
and all those who call to his way
to the Day of Judgment.
As to what follows, السلام عليكم ورحمة الله.
Alhamdulillah, this is another opportunity for us to
share and to learn in our new Muslim
corner.
And the intention of this class or this
gathering is to lay a strong foundation in
the principles of Islam, and especially geared toward
those who are interested in Islam and those
who are embracing it, and those who are
reviving their faith.
The intention is to try to come out
of the politics and the economics of the
material world and to deal with Islam at
its base, to build that strong foundation so
the roots of the tree of the individuals
who are coming into Islam are very strong.
And that is critical because Muslims come from
all parts of the world, all colors, all
nationalities, and these different groupings of people are
affected by their culture, because culture is something
that's developed over the centuries.
It's your language, it's your tribe, it's your
environment.
Your environment does shape your culture.
And for the most part, when monotheism came
to the peoples of the world, it was
able to develop alongside of the local culture.
But at certain points, there would be a
divergence.
And so we want to look at the
essence of what Islam is, away from some
of the stereotypes, and to connect it to
the reality on the ground of what we're
living in.
And these next three sessions, inshallah, will be
geared towards holiday myths, because in the northern
countries, we are going through a major change
right now in the climate, because we're coming
out of the fall and into the winter
season.
And so with the natural changes that will
be happening in the material world, it affects
people's understanding of the spiritual world.
And so, in essence, when we look at
Islam itself, the basis of Islam, the real
quality, if there was any quality, that could
be isolated as to what is a Muslim.
So if you say, okay, what is an
engineer, okay, who works on certain scientific formulas
and building, what is a doctor?
He works in medicine.
Okay, what is a Muslim?
So some people might say, oh, a Muslim
is somebody who wears certain clothes, they eat
halal food, they won't eat pork, they like,
you know, sometimes they might even say they
like pepper, you know, they like hot food.
You might get a lot of descriptions of
what is a Muslim.
But in looking at our sources, we recognize
that the real quality is tawhid.
And that is the unity in the concept
of the Creator.
Also unity in concept of people themselves, that
we look at humanity as one family.
So this tawhid concept is an ongoing process.
Okay, it's a belief, but it's a process
that we have to continue to renew and
to understand all of our lives.
And tawhid is something which is not particular
to the Middle East.
And this is a mistake that some people
fall into in thinking that monotheistic religions basically
came out of the Middle East.
And you'll get some historical studies of monotheism,
and it'll say that there are many different
gods, but it is the Semites, it is
the Semitic people, that monotheism came out of
the Semitic people who were living in the
center or what is now known as the
Middle East.
This is a major mistake.
Because Middle East, number one, is not middle
for the rest of the world.
Middle East is a concept.
If you look at Far East, these are
the terms we use.
It's far from where?
Okay?
If you base yourself in London, you base
yourself in Europe, China, that's the Far East.
And the Middle East would be like not
so far away, sort of in the middle,
in between Europe and China.
But if you live in China, with ancient
civilizations going back thousands of years, is China
the Far East?
No.
It's the center of the world.
So it's all based upon how you look
at it.
And in terms of Tawheed, we understand through
the text of the last revelation, the Qur
'an, in Surah Al-Nahl, the verse of
the B, or the chapter of the B,
verse 36, Allah tells us, وَلَقَدْ بَعَثْنَا فِي
كُلِّ أُمَّةٍ رَسُولَ عَنِيَ بُدُّ اللَّهَ وَاجْتَنِي بِالتَّغُوتِ
Surely we have sent to every nation a
messenger that they would worship Allah and avoid
false gods.
Some of them were guided by Allah, and
some were established in error.
So travel through the earth, and see what
was the end of those who denied the
truth.
So in this verse, the Qur'an coming
from the angel to Prophet Muhammad, the Prophet
and all of the Muslims are being guided
towards understanding that Tawheed is international.
And some people followed their messengers, some people
didn't.
In one tradition, we are told that somewhere
around 124,000 prophets and messengers came to
every nation and every tribe.
So at some point in time, within the
folk culture of people around the world, you
will see that somebody came amongst them who
was teaching the belief in the Creator and
to stay away from false gods.
And I did some limited investigation in traveling
to different parts of the world.
And in China, in the Cantonese section there
in Hong Kong and Macau, I asked one
of the historians, do you have a concept
of one god in Chinese?
And they said, yes, in the Mandarin, there
is Shang Ti.
So we use the word Shang Ti.
And how we describe Shang Ti is like
the great spirit, the universal spirit.
So that's a concept that they had in
ancient times.
On the African continent, I found that in
just about every single language group in Africa,
there was a way to say the Creator
or the great spirit.
One time I was in Glasgow in Scotland
and I was on a program and the
brother who was with me, a Scottish Muslim
brother, we were talking about Tauhid and he
said from their records that before Christ, there
were people, there was one person in particular,
he didn't have the exact name, but this
person, according to their traditions, was talking about
one god.
So it's something that is universal.
And that is the essence of Islam.
So Islam is monotheism, the belief in one
god, and it's something that was found in
societies around the world.
And the Kalima, which is the basis of
Islam, especially in the final form, because we
believe that Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him,
was the seal of the prophets.
So he was not the first prophet of
Islam.
Like some people from our point of view
mistakenly say there's Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
They separate the three so-called Abrahamic religions.
But we say no.
Abraham wasn't Jewish, he wasn't Christian.
He submitted to God.
And anyone who submits to God is Muslim.
So all of the prophets in the root,
generic definition of the word Islam, they would
be considered Muslims.
So that's what we mean when we say
Muslim.
It's not somebody who speaks Arabic or Urdu
or Turkish or lives in a certain part
of the world.
And this Kalima of course, La ilaha illallah
Muhammadur Rasulullah, in its final form was connected.
Not only there's no god but Allah, but
Muhammad is his messenger, meaning that he is
the final messenger.
So what is important, and we just want
to firm this up as we go into
these last three sessions in this time of
the year before we take a break for
this winter solstice, that in this analysis of
La ilaha illallah, so that's the first part
of the Kalima.
And in Arabic, the word La means no.
So just like you say no, La, naam,
means yes.
So La ilaha would mean no deity, no
god, nothing worthy of worship.
So you start off your testimony of faith
with a negative statement.
So this is now power of words, right?
It's power of words.
So you start off with a negative statement.
And you say this La ilaha.
And then the word illa comes in.
And that means but or accept.
So you cleared the air of all gods
and then you put in Allah.
So you say La ilaha illallah.
So therefore when you put in the word
Allah there, that's the confirmation.
The air is clear.
So there's no room for partners.
There's no room for daughters or sons linguistically
based on this statement.
And then theologically based on what the prophets
brought.
There's no room for anything other than the
belief in the Creator, the Great Spirit.
And we found out in our study of
Tawhid, but to fully understand it, we need
to go into the depths of what we
mean by Tawhid.
Because many people could say that they have
Tawhid.
Some person might say, I live in ancient
Egypt.
And we believe in one God.
It is Ra, the sun god.
So that's one.
But that's not what we're talking about.
We're talking about that Allah is one in
His rule.
There is no rival to Him.
Okay, that's what some scholars define as Tawhid
al-Rububiyyah.
So that means that Allah is one and
there's no rule.
Now that ancient Egyptian might say, okay, we
believe in Ra, although then they would bring
other gods as well, and that would break
that point.
Okay, so that's the first part of Tawhid.
Secondly, that Allah is one in His names
and descriptions.
There's nothing like Allah.
Okay, so in accepted monotheism, we believe that,
you know, Allah is in His names and
descriptions.
There's nothing like Allah.
As the Quran says, there's nothing similar to
Allah.
Okay, so if a person says the sun,
then that would break this.
Descriptions.
Because the sun has got a description.
And there's nothing similar to Allah.
The sun is a creation.
Okay, it's there.
If you say the moon is God, if
you say the river is God, it would
break this form of Tawhid.
Okay, and finally, and this is one of
the key points, that Allah is one in
His divinity and His worship.
And this is Tawhid al-Uluhiyyah or Tawhid
al-Ibadah.
And that is that, and this was a
critical point in what the prophets taught, is
that not only are we going to say
that Allah is one in His rule, He
is Rabb, He's the Lord, and in His
names, but He is the only divine being.
Okay, He's the only one we should worship.
That's where the prophets had a problem.
Because once you stop worshipping the idol, or
you stop worshipping the sun, you have now
contradicted their form of worship.
And this is important in our understanding.
I remember one time when I was living
and working in Jamaica in the Caribbean, and
we used to borrow some ovens, cooking equipment
from a Christian group.
We had a good relationship with a Christian
group, a Pentecostal group.
And so we used to borrow these ovens.
And one day I came back and the
brothers were there and they were debating with
the minister.
Hot debate.
And so the brothers are saying, no, we
believe in one God and you believe in
three.
And then the minister then shocked them and
he said, no, we believe in one God.
Okay, and so the brothers were dumbfounded.
They were stuck.
And I heard this debate and he's saying,
we believe in one God.
So what's the difference?
And I came along and I said to
the minister, who's the God?
And he said, Jesus.
So he wasn't lying, right?
But his concept of God was Jesus, a
man.
You see, so his tawhid was defective because
there's nothing similar to Allah.
You cannot say that Allah is anything like
what we have on earth, that we believe
that Allah is the ultimate being who lived,
who was in a form of life, divine,
before creation.
And he said, be and it is, and
creation began.
Okay, so this is a different concept altogether.
So in this form, and this is a
deep study that we looked at in a
previous set of sessions.
But for us, in the tawhid al-rububiyah,
right, in the lordship, okay, that Allah is
the lord of all the worlds.
Okay, what are some of the proofs for
this lord?
Number one, and this is sort of a
mantik, it's a logical type of discussion, that
if you have a creation, then there has
to be a creator.
And so khaliq and makhluq, and the makhluq
is created.
So if the creator is created, he's not
the creator.
So the khaliq is the one who created
from nothing and created all that we see.
Okay, and secondly, that the creation itself, and
this is a logical thing that most people
can see, who don't have blinders on their
eyes, that the systems in the earth, that
there is so much proof of a divine
creator, however you want to term that being,
but this divine creator, to set these systems
up, just look at the human body, look
at your eyes, look at your nervous system,
look at the different parts of the body.
How could this happen by chance?
If you want to logically debate that it's
all by chance, you'd have to be insane
to accept the fact that the human body
came about just through chance.
Okay, so that's another proof.
And also that all human beings at some
point in time, all parts of creation, feel
helplessness.
That can come when you get sick, that
can come when you're dying, that can come
when a storm comes.
It'll come to everybody.
And if we're talking about the creator or
creation, that's part of our being creation.
Okay, so that is our Tawhid.
And the opposite of Tawhid, what contradicts it,
the antithesis of Tawhid, is another word called
shirk.
Shirk.
And shirk means association of partners with Allah.
To associate partners with Allah.
Now I don't know whether this word shirk,
English takes from everywhere, right?
Because it's not so deep in its actual
vocabularies.
And we used to say, I don't know
if they say it now, if he wasn't
doing his job, they say he shirked his
duty.
You ever heard that before?
He shirked his duty.
Did they use that today?
Yeah, I don't know what that means.
In the sense of, it's not the same
as this.
He shirked his duty immediately, like he didn't
fulfill his job.
But in this case, shirk comes from ashraka
yushriqu, it means to associate partners with Allah.
Asharika is a company.
Okay, so a person who is a polytheist,
it's polytheism, believes in a creator, but believes
that that creator has partners, or assistants.
The creator needs help.
Or the creator has a family.
Or the creator has demigods.
Or the creator might take a wife from
human beings and have this half-god, half
-being.
You see?
This is shirk.
And this is, according to the text of
the Quran itself, in the fourth chapter, verse
116, that this is the gravest sin that
you can do.
إِنَّ اللَّهَ لَا يَغْفِرْ أَن يُشْرَكَ بِهِ وَيَغْفِرْ
مَا دُونَ ذَلِكَ لِمَن يَشَاءُ That Allah will
not forgive anybody who associates partners with Him.
But He will forgive anything else, if He
wills.
And another verse, Allah said, إِنَّ اللَّهَ يَغْفِرَ
ذُنُوبَ جَمِيعًۭا Allah forgives all sins.
So the scholars looked at these two.
One is saying there's no forgiveness for shirk.
And another is saying Allah forgives all sins.
So it was understood through the coming together
and how it was revealed that in lifetime,
before death, all sins can be forgiven.
So if a person then makes repentance before
they die, then even the sin of shirk
could be forgiven.
But if it's after death, that is where
this is the only sin which is unforgivable.
So this shirk in Rububiyyah, in Lordship again,
we're just looking at that.
Okay, how can this shirk come in the
concept of Rabb, or the Lord?
Okay, and one of the more common ways
which is very relevant to us today, one
form of this shirk is the concept of
Trinity.
That there is a three-part God.
A three-part God.
And it could be the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Ghost, as we find in
Christianity or the Holy Spirit.
Or it could be like in Hinduism, Brahma,
Shiva, and Vishnu.
Because Trinity was there in a number of
religions.
It's like a Godhead.
Right, the three-part Godhead.
So this is a form of shirk.
And it's there, and I remember in a
discussion now, I said, okay, to one minister,
okay, how can you compare this, the Trinity
with monotheism?
And he said, no, you don't understand, it's
like an egg.
The egg has got three parts, the shell,
the white, and the yolk.
But it's one egg, right?
See his logic?
I said, no, I don't know what math
you have, but one and one and one
is three.
There's three parts to your egg.
Okay, so but this is an ancient concept.
And it's been around for a while.
And just to give you a few examples
of this, is that you need to go
back to some of the ancient deities.
So you're talking about the main God, and
then you're talking about a female deity, you're
talking about a sun, or the main God
and a spirit, and a sun.
Okay, it comes in different forms, this tripod,
this is three-part Godhead.
One is the cult of Dionysius, and who
they believe his father was Zeus, mother Semele,
who's like a human, right?
And so this Dionysius has got like two
parts.
So this is important now.
It's a dual personality.
On one part, a holy being, son of
creator, or the main God.
But on another part, Dionysius is the God
of wine and immorality, drinking, free *, ecstasy.
Okay, and out of this, in this cult
that developed, you could eat anything you want.
They did not have things like circumcision that
you find in monotheistic religions, and so this
is one of the powerful cults that many
of them, not all of them, took on
this three parts.
Another one, another influence in this concept, how
it developed, an important influence, because you have
the main God, that's there for everybody, great
spirit.
Okay, but there was a group called the
religion of Mithras.
Mithras, or Mithra, this cult began in Persia.
And this is a deep and important study,
and you may have to become an investigative
journalist to really go deep into this, because
at one point the Christian church, they erased
everything to do with Mithras.
This cult had to be ruined, prohibited.
Why?
Because it was developed in Persia, and especially
in the military and whatnot, and in this
concept you have a divine father, a mother
who's a human, and then the mother gives
birth to the savior of humanity.
Okay, now look at the story.
This is before Jesus gives birth to the
savior of humanity.
She has a virgin birth.
Okay, and it's on like December 25th, and
Mithras is like crucified, buried, resurrected.
His holy day is the seventh day of
the week, that many of the sun worshipers
call sun day, right?
The day of the sun, right?
And it was eventually put into Christianity, because
the original Christians were Jewish, and their day
was Saturday, Yom Sabbath, the Sabbath, and that
was changed by Constantine around 325, and the
holy day became sun day.
So one of the greatest influences, one, was
Mithras.
Okay, so this is another important individual to
understand, and these individuals are very important in
our discussion on holiday myths, that we will
be going into, inshallah, in the coming classes.
So another group, or another cult, is the
cult of Horus, and they had a trinity
in ancient Egypt as well.
Egypt lasted for a long time.
So if you think that Egypt is just
the pharaoh, and the pharaoh wanted to be
god, and that's not, Egypt was first united,
upper and lower Egypt, in 3200 BC.
Think about this now.
3200 BC, they united their empire, and by
2500 BC, they were building pyramids.
Think of the size of the Great Pyramid.
So in order for you to build a
structure like that, that's got 1,500,000
blocks of granite, right angles, all kinds of
things, how long has your society lasted?
Some Egyptologists say it lasted, maybe began around
10,000 BC.
And it was in the south somewhere in
what is now the Sudan, the Nile Valley,
and it went north.
And then, so there's a lot of different
concepts in ancient Egypt.
There's monotheism, polytheism, and there's also this trinity,
there's a cult of this trinity.
And in the trinity there's the father, the
main god is like Osiris, and the mother
is, or the goddess, Isis, is the mother,
and the son is Horus.
So this is a trinity concept.
So trinity is not new, and we discussed
in a previous session that even the ancient
Greeks, Plato had a concept of trinity too.
So the concept of trinity was already around.
And interesting, even the Egyptians believed that Isis,
and this is actually sculpted pictures taken from
the pyramid reliefs that you get in Egypt.
There on the left, that's how they actually
depicted her.
And some of these things are actually still
available today.
It's miraculous what they found underneath these pyramids
and in the burial areas.
Okay?
And then next to it is the Ethiopian
concept of Mary and Jesus.
Okay?
And you see the Africans too, this Ethiopian
thing.
Ethiopians are nationalists, they're strong.
Right?
So even Mary is brown.
And Jesus is brown.
This was their concept.
But they believed that Isis bore Horus without
defiling herself.
It's like an immaculate conception.
That's what Catholics would say today.
Immaculate conception.
Okay?
Not like a regular woman.
Divine conception.
So that idea was around.
That's the Trinity.
Okay?
Another basis of the ancient societies which will
affect our discussion of holiday myths.
We want to set a foundation for our
discussion of holiday myths.
Okay?
And that is nature-based religions.
So this is another set of religions that
somehow meets with Trinity sometimes.
Sometimes it doesn't.
So these nature-based religions, and you find
this everywhere, if you come from South America,
if you come from Europe, if you come
from Africa, Asia, go into your folk traditions.
Go way back before the prophets that we
know in monotheism.
And you'll see religions sometimes based upon the
connection with the heavens.
So they base it upon the movement of
the sun and the planets and the stars.
Okay?
They base it on that.
Like right now, we are going into December.
We're going to discuss this a little more
inshallah, into what is called the Winter Solstice.
The Winter Solstice.
This is a serious change in the natural
world.
If you live in the equator in Barbados,
or in Guyana, or in Malaysia, the temperature
is 33 degrees.
It's a cold day at about 27.
It's only rain or no rain.
There's no major change.
But here, in the north, this is serious.
It's the Winter Solstice.
And we can see how short the days
are and how long the nights are.
So it's darkness coming in.
Okay?
So that affected people's religious concepts.
And their religions are based on this.
Next is, in the nature religions, they're connected
with these seasons.
It's the growth of vegetation.
So during these different seasons, whether it's fall
season, winter, spring, summer, okay, part of what
we see is religious rituals based on vegetation.
So we had in a previous discussion, we
were looking at the fall season, Halloween, and
the fall season that in this part of
the world, October, November, was a time when
there would be a lot of ripened fruits.
Canada, we're north of America, United States.
So you see the Americans having their Thanksgiving,
they're just in their Thanksgiving now.
And they're talking about their turkeys and their
Thanksgiving pies and whatever, because they're more south.
So their pumpkins were just coming out.
Okay, so that's the Thanksgiving.
So vegetation.
So there's literally rituals.
And it's right around that time you had
Halloween, which is this festival of evil.
And then you have Thanksgiving.
So these different religious ceremonies that came about.
And this was the religion for the people
at the time.
And up until today it's not the same
religious fervor.
Now it's sort of like a holiday and
you can get a nice turkey.
You can even have halal turkey.
And you can put some curry in it.
Or you can make shawarma.
Turkey shawarma.
Okay, however you like your meat.
Okay, the point is vegetation and growth.
The other part, which is sort of like
the basis of their religions, is based upon
the mysteries of reproduction, sexuality, and reproduction.
And so you'll see this coming out in
the religious ceremonies and traditions.
And in the future inshallah as we go
on, you'll find this particular aspect of the
belief systems coming out in the summer solstice.
So now is winter solstice, right?
It's the cold.
The darkness.
How are we going to escape the darkness?
What are we going to do?
Death is coming.
Okay, summer is different because summer, you're in
the middle of the summer.
And everybody's relaxed.
Their clothes are off.
Things are coming to life.
Fertility.
It starts in the spring, your fertility.
So by the time June comes, you're in
the middle of your fertility things now.
And so sexuality became a big thing at
that time.
Very big.
And you'll see cults developing in the ancient
world, especially around the so-called goddess Astarte.
Astarte.
There's different names.
The names that we know, the Greeks said
Aphrodite.
But the Greeks and the Romans said Venus.
Okay, and so Venus, Aphrodite, Venus was the
goddess of love.
So love and sexuality.
And her young partner, or her young associate
who carried out her actions was Cupid.
Okay, and Cupid would now shoot his arrow
and people fall in love.
The Greeks say Eros.
That's a heavy term because from Eros comes
erotica.
Erotic.
So if you say something is erotic.
Okay, that means sexual, right?
This was part of the religion.
This is not just something which is done
in the red light district of your town.
This is the religion.
It's the basis of how they're looking at
the world.
It becomes a very important time, and we'll
see this as we go on.
In the summer solstice, it's a serious thing
now.
And you'll now see it being played out
in June.
But these are the three bases of these
nature based religions.
And we will inshallah in the coming session
see how it plays out in the winter
solstice as we're coming now towards the winter
solstice.
Okay, and the last form of these beliefs
systems, the last form is sun worship.
And of course the sun worship of all
the symbols, the sun worship, that was probably
the largest cult.
It was in all the different groups, because
the sun is the largest object in the
universe.
Okay, so this is the basis of holiday
myths.
Where do the different how the shirk comes
in.
And how we as Muslims now, we have
to be on guard for this.
We have to be aware of this.
It's extremely important for us to be aware
of what is happening around us.
Okay, so this is our foundation.
And you'll see it played out in the
life of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him,
in terms of the strict concept of monotheism
and all of the different aspects of culture
which brought in shirk, you leave it.
If it's something which is just your culture,
you wear woolen clothes in the winter, you
like hot pepper in your food, no problem.
But if it's something, for instance, the eye
of Tengri, this is the ancient Mongolian Turkish
god, the blue eye.
Right?
If people believe that's an amulet, you got
to have it on your body, you got
to put it everywhere, that's a problem now,
because that's shirk.
You're giving power to the eye of Tengri.
You see?
So this is the basis of our holiday
mitz, and inshallah we want to go further
into it as we enter now into the
winter solstice.
So I want to open up the floor
for any questions that anybody has concerning these
concepts coming out of the holiday mitz.
So the floor is open for any questions
that anybody has.
Any questions online?
So this is our basis now, and it's
at this point in our week in our
New Muslim Corner that either we have questions
dealing with the class or any general questions.
It's a chance for general questions, because we
will be breaking for Isha prayer.
That's how Isha comes in at 8 o
'clock.
So we'll be breaking in a little while
for Isha prayer.
So any general questions anybody has concerning anything
concerning Islam.
The floor is open for any general questions.
The floor is open.
Online, do we have any questions of anybody
or any general questions?
Yeah, so if online you have a question,
type it in.
Okay, you can type it in the chat
area.
Yeah, so you can type it into the
chat area.
If you have a question, it will show.
So this is something, again, the strong belief
in one God.
This is something that was consolidated by Prophet
Muhammad, peace be upon him, constantly calling to
the belief in one God, never changing his
position.
All the things that they went through, finally
making the migration to Medina.
And then as we have been studying and
learning, suffering under a number of attacks that
were there.
And we find that eventually in the eighth
year after the hijrah, the migration, the Prophet
was able to return to Mecca and he
actually conquered the city of Mecca with no
fighting.
And so his followers had become so strong,
the polytheists were so weak, that he took
over the city and contrary to what people
might say, Islam is * religion, there was
no bloodbath, there was a general amnesty, and
Mecca became a sanctuary of Tawhid.
And one of the things that he did
is that the idols that were there, because
there were a number of idols in the
Kaaba itself, 360 idols, there were idols in
different places around, surrounding Mecca, that all of
these were destroyed.
Because there had to be a place on
earth where the belief in one God would
be solid and where people could travel to
that place and they could worship the Creator
directly, without having to go through gods and
entities and different beings.
Also, superstitions, all the different superstitions of the
Jahiliyyah, the ignorance, the times of ignorance were
abolished during this time.
And because of this, now, the people of
Arabia began to enter into Islam in large
numbers.
And so here you will now have thousands
of people starting to enter into Islam, chiefs,
villages, and we will see as we go
on further in the life of the Prophet,
peace be upon him, how it made a
major difference.
The air was clear of the false gods
and the belief in one God was open
for people, and there was a place where
people could go and purify their concept of
the Creator and at least have that surety
that they were not held down by superstitions,
that their culture would not force them to
do something against their belief in the Creator
and the heavens and the earth.
And so this came about in the eighth
year after the migration that Prophet Muhammad, peace
be upon him, made from Mecca to Medina,
that they took over Mecca, and it is
to his credit that there was no bloodbath,
there was no fighting.
And so that is the basis of our
Tawheed, and I leave you with this thought,
and we'll see you again inshallah.