Abdur Raheem Green – Islam The Misunderstood Religion

Now I'm going to talk about a topic Islam the misunderstood religion, Islam the misunderstood religion. And the first thing I would like to talk about.

The first thing I'd like to talk about is Islam itself. What does the word Islam mean? Okay, so the word Islam. So you will often find that people say the word Islam means peace. And it is true in a sense that Islam means peace.

In the sense that peace, true peace, which is inner peace. Now often we think of peace being as the absence of war. But actually, this is a very limited and narrow definition of peace as just the absence of war. Because in fact, in reality, we may not have war, but we still may not have peace. Okay, many societies may not be at war with other countries, but you will find that those societies themselves are full of internal conflicts.

So no peace is a product of Islam. And when we say peace, we mean a deep inner tranquility. That is something that for the one who really truly follows Islam, they will experience peace, but actually the word Islam itself means submission. It means submission. Okay. And before the, you know, before the film, fitna, yeah, there was another film which was called, I think, by a Danish filmmaker a call it submission. And I think it's pretty obvious the question, I'm going to ask you, what, what do you think of the word submission in the context of your average Norwegian? Yeah. Do you think what do you think that's positive or negative?

submission? Do you think that's a positive word or a negative word? For your average Norwegian?

Yeah, it's negative, right? If you say Islam in submission,

they'll say, yeah, Islam means submission, and we have freedom. So I'm not interested in that. Thank you very much, right? Because submission in you know, in the context, certainly of the Western ideologies is a very negative concept. Okay. But what I really want to talk about, you know, is what does submission mean? What is the reality of submission.

And, in fact, I would like to point out to you that submission is something that we do, all the time in our lives, we are always submitting in our lives throughout our lives. In fact, I would like to lay a challenge down to every freedom loving person, okay? Because the term freedom really similarly, if you look at freedom, it doesn't exist, there is no such thing as absolute freedom. No society leaves you absolutely free to do absolutely. Whatever you like. Is that true or not? It's true. Okay.

So the set, you know, freedom in an absolute sense, is something that just does not exist. When a country says we are freedom, we believe in freedom. Of course, if you discuss with intelligent people, they what they mean is they they will say no, we have more free in this and this and this area than other nations. But that's not how it's sold to you. It's not how it's sold, because actually being sold an idea. And the idea of being sold is freedom. And everybody likes the idea of being free. Actually, I would say the ideal is that you could leave everybody absolutely free to do whatever they like, and there's no rules to govern their behavior, and people would just

automatically behave in the best way. That would be the ideal, right? Okay. We don't have any laws. We don't have any rules. Everyone just behaves in the right way. Everyone treats each other in the right way. Yeah. And this would be the ideal situation, right? No government, no control, okay. But this, this is unrealistic. There is no historical precedent, really, maybe some islands I don't know, somewhere, you know, who have something like that. But human beings, this is not something that we find that human beings have ever been able to accomplish something like that. So all society, all human societies, including this one in which we live, they are trying to strike a

balance, right? They're trying to strike a balance between two things. One is individual freedom. One is individual freedom, and the other is limiting that freedom

in order to protect society, because when human beings live together, and we talked about this yesterday,

what we need to do a society in order that people different people do different jobs and society is able to run and people conform to laws and they obey those laws. What

We have to try and do is socialize people, we have to try and get people to buy into an ideal and a concept, a way of living. And according to this, people are given different tasks. People do different duties, people follow laws. And this is the reality, we need those laws. And they limit the restriction, they restrict the freedom of the individual in order to protect the size of society. And the debate that is always going on in every society. And sometimes it's more obvious than others. How much do we live limit? How much do we limit the freedom of the individual in order to protect the society? Yeah. Now, this is very, very clear in America and Britain, where we have

had terrorist attacks. Okay, so Britain and America, they've had terrorist attacks. And this debate, this whole debate has come to the forefront. Because obviously, America, especially, you know, is well used to be very much concerned with, you know, freedom, freedom of speech, and many freedoms that people are given. Okay, so American society is concerned with that. But now they have passed a whole series of very, very draconian laws, which is known as the Patriot Act. And these laws, obviously, they restrict the freedoms that people have. So what you have is a type of a statement, that's an oxymoron. It's a type of contradiction in terms. In order for us to continue our freedoms,

we're going to have to limit your freedom, is what they say. So in order for us to keep on being free, we have to limit your freedom. And this is the same thing the debate is in UK is that how much can we keep restricting people's freedoms in order to protect our society, because what happens is, we get to a stage where we don't even respect what we consider to be human rights anymore. Because in order to protect ourselves from terrorism, or whatever it may be, we have restricted the human so much that we even now begin to trample upon and restrict their human rights. Okay. But actually, this is the debate that all societies are having all the time.

But one thing I want us to realize, whether we are Muslim, Christian, Jew, whether our we have a secular outlook, there is something that all of us, I think, have in common. Right. And it's a it's disingenuous for anyone in the press or for politicians, okay, or even, to suggest really otherwise, that we all have something in common. The vast majority of us, whoever we are, whatever we are, we most of us want to live in a peaceful society, and a prosperous society, we are concerned that we want our children to be protected. Okay, we want to be protected, protected. We don't want our goods to be stolen. We don't want our children to be preyed upon. We don't want our women to be raped.

Yeah, we don't want people to have psychological problems, okay? We don't want violence in the streets. We want to be able to live in a society where we can buy where we can sell, we can exchange goods where we can try to live a prosperous, happy life. Now, every most human beings, that's what they want. Right? That's what they want. Muslims are not any different.

And for anyone to suggest that Muslims want anything different, or that Islam itself as a religion, teaches anything different is at the very least disingenuous at the most it is perhaps plain evil.

When we're talking about Islam, the misunderstood religion, one of the things that I like to point out to people, and actually a documentary maker in England did this. The press in England has actually over the years, invented pure lies about Muslims. I mean, I am saying pure lies. And one documentary maker, he actually commissioned a university study to look at the news reports about Muslims and to actually analyze them and actually trace down and question the people whom they had been claimed, for example, Muslims want Christmas banned. Yeah, this comes up again and again, Muslims one Christmas banned in such and such Council in such and such province. Yeah. Muslims

demanded that Christmas trees should not be such and such, right. In fact, when the journalist went, and they actually interviewed the Council, the council said, this is absolute rubbish. No such thing happened. Right. All that happened was one Muslim woman was asked to come to a Christmas party and said, I'm sorry, I can't come to the Christmas party or something.

From that was a really a total lie. For example, another type of lie is Muslim in hospital to hospital demands that pig his picture is taken down from the wall. Right? Okay. I mean, I hear this is something that someone had it maybe it happened. But there are stories like this, which they were discovered what actually absolutely fabrications lies, right. The other thing was Sharia law Muslims want to implement Sharia law, okay. And then what did they do? They went around they actually did a poll and they interviewed Muslims. And they said, Do you want Sharia law in England? Right? And they found like 40% of Muslims said, yes, they want Sharia law in England and this and that. So they came

with these statistics, okay. And there was a big hullabaloo about Muslims want Sharia law in England? Okay. And actually, what this journalists did, is he took these headlines, and he all he did something very simple. He took out the word Muslim, and he put the word Jew. That's all he did. He took out the word Muslim, and he put in the word Jew. And then he went on the street. And he showed people, Jews want their own law. Jews want to be able to practice their own laws. Same headline, but the word Muslim is taken out. Is any said what do you think of this headline? They said, that's very racist. That's anti semitic. That's inflammatory. Right? Okay. Jews one Christmas

band. Oh, that they shouldn't say that about Jews. Yeah, I mean, all the headlines you went, and he showed them a whole series of these headlines. They just placed the replace the word Muslim with Jews. And then he went and said, actually, those were not real headlines. Here are the real headlines. And he showed them what the papers had said, and you should have seen the faces of those people. Right? Looking ashamed of themselves ashamed of themselves. Right. I guarantee you, brothers and sisters, and whoever's here is not a Muslim.

Anything you have against Islam, I can find something worse in the biblical law which Jews adhere to and they believe in. In fact, there are so many death punishments in the biblical law. I can't remember I haven't counted them. One of them is breaking the Sabbath. The punishment for breaking the Sabbath is death. The punishment for hitting your parents, according to the Judaic law, is death. hitting your parents is death. Right. But we don't find anyone going out and you know, Jews claim that you should kill your parents. Yeah. You know, no Jew Jews claim you should slow to your children for touching their parents. Yeah, and stuff like that. Because quite rightly, quite

rightly, I have to say, this type of these types of words, and these type of statements, right, are inflammatory. And we all know, and we should all know, where did 150 200 300 actually it's a lot more time than that. Okay. Actually, this type of attitude towards Jews started a long time ago in Christendom. But it all ended up after, by the way, a lot of years of massacres of Jews, the Jews were not only massacred, by Hitler, in the concentration camps, if you look in European history, Jews have been slaughtered throughout European history. Okay, that was just the most nasty and the most dramatic of them. But what came behind this, lots of the Jews was years and years of

propaganda, anti semitism. And in fact, if you look at the type of stuff that people are saying about Muslims today, it is exactly the same type of things that were being said about Jews in the past. Exactly the same type of things. Okay.

And this, actually, in my opinion, is a very nasty streak that exists within Europeans, despite all of their claims of tolerance, and all of their claims of being open minded and this and that there is a very nasty streak that has nasty anti semitic streak that runs throughout European history. And this type of propaganda that we find against Islam is just another branch of it. It's just another version of it. The Muslims are the new Jews. We are the new ones that the these people with this very nasty streak in them, they have found they always like the alien, the other to pick on in the past it was the Jews today it is the Muslims because fundamentally for 90% of Muslims, okay. The

reality is

They just want to live a peaceful life. They want to benefit from what they can materialistically from society. And in fact, in general, they want to contribute to the well being of humanity. We want to live peaceful lives for us, our families, and our children. Right. Islam teaches us about how to be a good neighbor, to the extent that the Prophet Mohammed May Allah peace and blessings be upon him. He swore by God. He said, Well law he by God, he is not a believer will lie by God. He is not a believer, by God, he is not a believer, the one whose neighbor is not safe from his mischeif. And the Prophet did not say as to whether this neighbor was a Muslim or not. It doesn't matter.

If you're Muslim, if your neighbor is Muslim or not Muslim, it doesn't matter. You cannot be mischievous and destroy, to annoy your neighbor. In fact, it's impossible that you are a person of faith in God, and you could treat your neighbor like that. In fact, indeed, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, he is not a believer who sleeps with his stomach full or her stomach full while her neighbor is hungry. You can't be believing in God, and your stomach is full, and your neighbor is hungry. In fact, the prophet said when you cook, add some more, make some more stew make the cooking more so you can share it with your neighbors. This is what it's specific instructions in

Islam, even to the extent that you should share your food with your neighbors. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam he gots peace and blessings be upon him himself. in Mecca.

He used to live next to and this is a very famous story. Many Muslims, they have heard of this story, of course, he used to one of his neighbors was a Jew s. And she regularly used to throw rubbish on the Prophet, or on the path of the Prophet when the prophet SAW them used to walk down the street. regularly. She used to do this and one day, the prophet was walking past the street. And what did he notice? No rubbish that day thrown on him. Right. So what did he do? He went back and he knocked on the door. And the maid servant of the house, answered the door. And he started saying he started asking, you know, is your is your mistress? Okay? Is she Well, is there anything I can do

for her? You know, I'm her neighbor, I live just close by, if there's anything I can do to help her, please just let me know. Okay, along something along these lines, okay. And when this woman, she heard about this, she said, a shadow. In the law.

school, I testify there is no God, but God. And Muhammad is the Messenger of God, only prophets have character like this. So this is how the Prophet Mohammed treated his neighbor, there was a great scholar of Islam, whose name was Sophia and a Foley. And next to him used to live a Jew, his neighbor was a Jew, so many people used to come and beg this Jew, let me buy your house. Let me they used to offer him huge amounts of money to buy his house because they wanted to live as Muslims next to this great scholar. And he kept on refusing. And he said to them, where am I going to be able to find a house and have a neighbor like Sophia?

Where am I going to find a house? And I'm going to have a neighbor like Sophia, and this is how this is our religion. Okay, so this is our Deen is that our Deen is seeking to create a better society. We all agree, therefore, any sensible person, and the only person I really think will not agree with this, are the extremists on both ends of the spectrum. Right? They will be the extremists on both ends of the spectrum, the Neo fascists, right? And the Muslim extremist, but in between that are the ordinary people. So in reality, what are we saying? We are saying, look, we agree upon the same things, the only thing we disagree upon, is how do we reach that goal? Here's the goal we want to

reach and we all want to reach the same goal, but we are disagreeing really about the means that we reach that goal. Okay, how much freedom should the individual have? And in what way should we punish those people who transgress those limits? Right? But if you look at it the argumentation about Oh, you punish people like this, and you punish people like that, these in reality, the externalities, you know, these things are not evil in and of themselves. They are really different goals, different means to reach the same goal, the same destination. Now, it may seem to the eyes of people who live in Norway or England or I don't know, wherever at the moment, people may seem, they may say, Oh,

these laws that you Muslims have. They're very barbaric here.

And I will admit, from the point of view of someone who is both up in the West, they seem very barbaric, right? chopping the hand of the thief, for example, it seems very barbaric. Okay? There's no doubt about that. If you're brought up here, that's how it's gonna look. Okay. But what is the objective? The objective is that people will live in a safer society. Similarly, what we all agree that stealing is bad, don't we? Right? I don't think anyone's gonna disagree, that stealing is bad. No one who's had the property stolen, and has had things taken from them is going to think that's good. Right? So we're talking about how what is the solution to the problem? How do we reach the

goal that we want to achieve? We have now we have different opinions about that. Okay. Now, you may say the punishment is harsh. But then we can point to examples, historically, and even in the world today, where that punishment is implemented. First of all, very few people receive that punishment. But in spite of that, the society is really, really safe. People can leave that goods, people can leave even that goal that cause they leave doors open, and people are not harmed. Even in England, in UK, I recently just the other day, had my bike stolen, okay, from the back of my garden, right? And my wife was going around, okay, knocking on the doors of neighbors. And so many people said,

we've had the same problem. Right. And my wife, she's actually been sometimes a bit more fiery than even me. And I have to say, calm down a bit, you know, whatever. Right. And she was saying to the neighbor, you know, I think we should probably chop their hands off is the good thing. The neighbors going Yes, that's a good idea. Right? I think that's it, and you will be surprised. You'll be surprised how many people right would agree with that, right? You see, in Islam, it's not about some mad Muslims, as hordes going around, hide, jumping on some person they think is a thief and just slashing their hand off like that. He got him is this and

like, in that film, was that film that superhero?

is you know, anything I forget it. Anyway, I just saw like three seconds of it. And he sharpens this thing. And he chops the hand off this terrorist, you know, comes with the handgun circle. I don't care. But anyway, the point being is that you'd be surprised how many people would say yeah, you know, because what, really seriously? Okay, in Islam, we're not talking about gratuitously just, you know, amputating people's hands. No, it's not like that. It is a legal process. Like any other legal process, no one gets punished or should get punished, according to Islamic law until they have gone through the proper legal process, just like any other legal process, they have to go to the court,

they have to go to the judge. Right. And you see the babies agree.

Yeah, okay.

And, you know, and just like any other legal process, and there are conditions, there are conditions, for example, if the person who stole right, is stealing out of some great need or necessity, like hunger, extreme hunger, or, you know, there is some severe family problem, and you know, whatever. I mean, this is no, the punishment is for people who are gratuitously stealing. That's just they, you know, they just steal because that's what they do not because they have some need. So there are all you know, there are conditions that have to be laid down, just like every other punishment, but we have to say, we have to ask, yes, it may seem to us, right, that it is, you

know, severe, and so and so on with many of the sherea punishments, but in reality, we also have to be honest, and we have to look at society. You know, and I don't know much about Norwegian society. But obviously I live in, you know, I live in London, and the part of London where I live, okay. every single week, we are hearing about kids who are shooting each other, who are stabbing each other, who are killing each other. We hear about perfectly innocent people being beaten to death by gangs, have you literally in front of their daughters in front of their children? Right? It's actually becoming so common that now they don't even half the time bother even mentioning it in the

newspapers, right. I mean, you know, this is the question you say, you say that these punishments are violent, these punishments are harsh, right? But what is happening to our society? What is happening to our societies? How about those people who are being beaten and stabbed and killed? Right? How about those people who are having that? Don't they have rights? Don't they have the right isn't the purpose of law to protect the society

isn't the purpose. So when you send people to prison, right now, you may argue, and you see we all want to achieve the same thing. We all want a peaceful society.

But you will say no, we are humane. Okay, we don't do these barbaric things. Okay, well, okay, fine. That's, in my opinion just polemics, right. But what do you do? You send people to prison? I'm not I don't know about Norway. But let's talk about England, for example, right? If it's the same, you'll know what I'm talking about what happens in prison? Most of the time, most of the time when people go to prison, right? They sit down with other thieves, other criminals, employee, they'll sit down with people who committed worse crimes than they even did. Right? And what do they do? They sit there feeling, Oh, I'm so bad. I shouldn't have done that. I'm gonna be a good boy next time. Right?

You know, you know what they do? They sit down with other thieves and criminals and those other things and criminals, teach them how to commit crimes. Right? If he didn't know how to pick a lot, by the time he's out of prison, he'll know how to pick a look. If you didn't know how to break out the universe, a window, he'll know because you know what, he's gone to a university of crime. No, it's serious. He's gone to a university, or she's gone to a university of crime. And so when that person comes out, are they thinking, Oh, I'm not going to do this? No, they so I'll do it better. I'll do it better next time. And I won't get caught because I've learned some new tricks that I

didn't learn before. Now you tell me, does this stop the thief from stealing? Nope, not 80%. People reinvent this, it protects society.

It doesn't protect us. In fact, you've just made society worse. Right.

So let's just forget the polemics. Right, let's forget the polemics, let's be honest, right, about what is working as a system because the whole point of laws is to protect society, and to create a peaceful, prosperous society. You know, everyone, I tell you something, you know, 20 years ago, when I became Muslim, I went down to speaker's corner in London, I stay, you can see some of the videos probably of me standing up there, shouting away, right. And I wasn't shouting, because angry, I'm shouting, because the only way you get heard in speaker's corner, right, I'm standing there. And one of the things I used to talk about right is the evil of interest, right? The evil of interest, and

the system and the economic system that is based upon interest. And I used to talk about how the whole interest based system is controlling it's a new means to control and colonize the third world. And it's very cruel, and it's very evil. Right? Because they generate this enthusiasm through the propaganda through the media propaganda, which we talked about yesterday. Right? Who did the media support? Obviously, the right what their advertisers want them to write? Okay. Okay, I'm sorry to say, many journalists are nothing more than intellectual prostitutes. Really, they have, they have intelligence, but they prostitute it to whoever is gonna pay them. And you'll see they will change

their mind. One day, they will be writing this next five years, they'll be writing that whoever pays them the right for them. Right, and who is that paymaster? The the newspapers and the magazines that depend and rely upon what advertising? We went through that yesterday. Okay. So these banks, they create this not the banks, but the society through this propaganda through the media, they go to the third world, they create in the minds and hearts of this people a perceived need for products they actually don't need, but they create that desire. So what do they say to them? How do you get these products? How do you get them? Well, you know, if you want to buy our goods, yeah. If you want to

buy our sophisticated Western goods, of course, we're not going to, we're not going to accept, you know, I don't know, whatever the currency is, you know, Kenyan shillings or, you know, you know, shells, or I don't know what people know, we need real money, dollars pounds, right? But if you want, you know, dollars and pounds that will tell you what you need to do, what you need to do, is you need to grow cash crops, things like coffee, cocoa tea. Yeah. And what you do is then you sell them to us. Now those things are valuable to us, and we'll give you dollars for that. Right. So what do people do? Is they the land that the people used to use to feed themselves for agriculture? Yeah.

They then convert to cash crops, huge swaths of land being converted to cash crops, but of course, what they don't tell all of these poor people is they're telling every other poor person to do the same thing. So what happens according to the economic system, when you have a glut, right of any particular products, right, you have an over you know, if you have too much coffee, too much cocoa too much sugar, too much tea what happens? supply and demand right, the cost goes down. The price is less

Right.

So you have all of these people producing this cash crops, but there's so much of it in the market. So these people thought they were gonna get nice money for it, what do they find lo and behold, they're not getting so much money for it. Okay, the money they're getting is less. But they've turned their arable land, into cash crops. And now what starts to happen, that people start to get hungry, the food that they that the land they used to grow food on, they're not growing food on that anymore. They're going correct cash crops, they don't have any food. And who comes along the great compassionate Western nations, they come along and they say, Don't worry, we've got heaps of grain.

We've got heaps of food, we've got stuff, you know, you just need to buy it from us, we'll send it to you, right? Well, we haven't got any money, don't worry, we'll lend you some money. Yeah, we'll lend you some money, right. But what you need to do is you need to make sure that your whole economic system is designed in a way that you can earn dollars and pounds, and so on and so forth. So what happens, they get in a vicious circle, they borrow money to feed the people, right? They need to turn more land to produce more cash crops, but the price of that never meets their expectation, then they need to borrow more money. And then they have the interest on top of that,

because it's based upon the rubber until the state that we have in the third world now that the interest on the debt is actually more than the debt itself. That is total slavery. That is so much more effective than sending armies. Right. I mean, why would I want to send my soldiers over there to get killed? Let's just enslave them with debt. Right.

And you know what, this is not only happening on an incident, this is happening to you, you your average, Norwegian, your average, they don't feel the pit? Well, you know, back in the days when I was trying to say, you know, it's the same for you and you borrow money from the bank, you becoming a slave. It's like feudalism all over again. You become owned by the bank. The bank becomes like your fool and what I was saying that the people are saying, What are you talking about? Right? What are you going on about look at the capitalist, interest based system. It's made the world more prosperous, it's made the world more successful. Look at it, it's it's dominant. And, you know, it's

like I was talking to the wind. You know, what, if you say to people today, okay, suddenly now, when people have been hit by the credit crunch, when they've seen that the banks is they are built on air, when they've seen the reality of what Allah said young hakala who Riba to Allah will face Riba, Allah God will, you know, he will make it nothing? And today the world what what I did? Seven? No. Okay, what is it 750 billion bush gave to the banks, right? And then now Obama, another 850 billion, right? Where did all that money go?

Wait, where did it go?

Right. And everyone is suffering. Now you know what now when you start talking about the Islamic finance system, that Islam 1400 years ago, had a system of economics that is not based upon interests that is interest free, that is based upon business and profit and loss sharing. Now, suddenly, suddenly, people now are listening. Suddenly, they say, Yeah, you've got something to say. Right? Although, you know, what, 20 years ago, we were just talking, talking, and no one was listening.

So the point here, is that really, what do we want, we want the same thing. Okay, we want the same thing. We just have different, you see, but as Muslims, we don't believe that we as Muslims have, you know, we're so clever. And you know, we're so advanced, and we sat down and we thought these things up for ourselves, okay. Now, the fundamental difference here, the real difference is, we as Muslims believe that what we have is from God.

We believe we have knowledge that is from the Creator of the heavens and the earth, the one who created us and knows us. He knows our desires, he knows our needs, he knows human society. He knows how we will react to certain things. He knows how you respond to certain things. God knows what punishments work and what don't. God knows what environment human beings need to live in, to have the most prosperous and peaceful and successful society and where they can live in the best manner, because God created us, right. So this is what it is based upon. Right? Our our belief is based upon that. And that's really what Islam then means submission to God. We all submit in our life. We all

do things. What is submission Anyway, let's examine submission. Right? When you submit what is

It means you give up something that you want, or you desire. Right? And you give it up in order to do something that someone else wants and someone else desires right? Now I'm sure that Okay, I guess that everyone in this room has parents or a parent, right? Or a carer who looks after them. Yeah. Or who has had that in their life? Yeah. Okay, most of us have, right? Even if we were unfortunate enough to go to an institution still applies. Now, I'm sure everyone would agree doesn't often happen, that your mom and dad tell you to do something that you don't want to do?

Oh, yeah, of course, there is. Right? Okay. So when your parents tell you do this, and do that, or don't do this, and don't do that, overall, you really want to do that thing, right? Or you really don't want to do that thing. But you go ahead and do it, or you go ahead and abstain from it. That's submission. You're giving up what you want. Right? In order to do something to that someone else wants you to do so you're submitting, you're submitting yourself to the will of your parents. Right. Now, there are three different ways that people submit, either we submit right out of love, we submit out of love, we submit because we love those people, we love that person, and we want to

please them and we want to do you know, we want to do something and we will do that. Right? If you're married. That's what it's all about. Right? You don't do the washing up. You don't want to do the cooking talking about men here actually. And but you know what? Your wife needs help. Right? You may not want to do it. But you know, she asked you to do this to fix that to fix this. But you go ahead and do it. Why? Because you love your wife. Right? You love her. You love your kids. Right? You love your parents. So sometimes you do things out of love. But sometimes you do it out of fear. Sometimes you submit out of fear. Why don't often Why don't we break the law? Why don't I just

parked my car in a pocket in the middle of the street? Right? I used to do that in Egypt.

Literally, right? you park your car in the middle of the street, you go to the policeman, you said he has wide Guinea. There's one pound god my car, he will stand next to your car for three hours. Right? And he will got it personally. For one pound. And by the way, in those days, you know, one pound was a lot for a policeman since his monthly wage was like, I don't know five pounds. right for us nothing. Right? So, you know, can you just park your car? Okay, no way. Right? What happens if you park your car in the middle of the street?

And I've seen a lot of cars parked really annoying, but what happens generally?

You get fine. Right? Is that it? They take your car away? Do they have a toy away and stuff like that? Maybe people are really chill a Norway, right? But in England, my God, you know, any little infringement, your car is parked on a yellow line, this is out of the zone. That's it, take it all the way clamp, right? Sometimes the fine you have to pay is more than the price of your car. Right? Okay, so what makes you not do that? It's fear. It's fear, you're motivated by fear. I'm afraid of the result. I'm afraid of the punishment. I'm afraid what's gonna happen to me if I break this law? So therefore, what do you do you submit? You follow the law? Because you're afraid of what's going

to happen to you if you don't? Right? And sometimes you submit out of just knowing that that's the right thing to do. You go to the doctor, the doctor says, Listen, I'm sorry, but you got cancer, I have to operate on you. If you don't, you'll die in two weeks. Now who actually wants to be cut open?

Right? Does anyone actually want Oh, let me see. What should I do for fun today? Let me get myself cut open. Right. Okay, let's do some gangster Who wants some scars to show off? Right? Okay. But apart from that, you don't want that. Right. But you know what, you know, the doctor saying the right thing. You know, this is the right. So you submit? Because you know that that's the right thing to do. It makes sense. Right? If there's any other reason why people can submit, I don't know. But those are the three reasons. So we're all submitting throughout all of life or life to someone or something. Right? You never. In fact, I will challenge you to find a single moment when you are

not submitting to someone or something. I mean, you can't because as a human being you have to submit to your biological desires. You have to breathe, your heart has to pump, pump, you know blood around your body. You know, you're always submitting to someone or something you just never escape it throughout your life. So submission is the reality. Of course, there's some things we submit to you by choice.

Because we choose to submit or not to submit. Right, so we're all submitting. What is Islam saying? Islam is saying the one that we should submit to really, in reality is our Creator is good. Because whoever you love, God has more right to your life. Think about why you love people. Think about why you love your parents think about that. Well, God created your parents, God created your wife, God created your husband, whatever it is that you love. God created that. So surely you have more reason to love the one who created those things and those things themselves.

So God has the most right to your love. So therefore, surely doesn't God have the most right to your submission? Don't you have doesn't have the most right that you should give in? Right? To do what is pleasing to Him to please Him? Yeah. See? agreement? The one that counts the baby. Okay. And how about fear? Yes, fear. I'm not going to shy away from it. I'm terrified. But whatever most terrifying you think you can think of the most terrifying pain. And you know, I don't know you who's been in pain. Any woman who's given birth to a child knows what pain is right? And they say gouts is more painful than childbirth. Right? You know, selected, you know, gout is like a rheumatism severe

form. So you will experience pain, how about emotional pain, as well? loss? You know what, that pain is a reality in the world. Right? So that pain, whatever that pain is, similarly, that's something God has control over. And God can subject you to even more pain, if he wants to. Right? If he wants to remove it, he can remove it. So yeah, I'm afraid you shouldn't be afraid God has more right? That you should be afraid of him than anything else. Right? And how about how about intelligence? How about wisdom? How about following something? Because it's wise? Well, God is the most wise, he knows everything. If I'm going to decide to submit to something because it's sensible. And it makes sense,

then God has more right, that we should submit on that basis. God's knowledge is perfect, and ours is imperfect. So this is the logic behind the essence of Islam.

Is that I don't think that any person would argue the logic of it. Right? The Quran actually says, if this book is from God, if this book is from God, who else but a fool can reject it? So I mean, from the premise, at least take the premise that if the core and really is from God, surely would any sensible person would agree, right? That the only choice we have is to do what the Quran says. Right? If it is from God, and we can argue about whether it's from God, and see, this is the point, people argue, oh, your your, your religion says this, your religion says that it's got this punishment, it's got this thing it says you treat this person in that way, right? But you're missing

the point. Because for the Muslim, it's all irrelevant, in a sense about these details, right? Because if we believe it's from God, if we believe it's from the Creator, right, then that's what I have to do, I have to submit myself to what the Creator teaches to what the Creator says, that's what it's about. And it may or may not make sense to me. But surely I can recognize that God understands me better than I understand myself. And I'm sure how many people in this room, it's happened to them in their lives. Right. This things your parents have told you. I mean, anyone who's got kids know that don't do that. But how many kids even 10 year old kids think they know better?

Right? Let alone if you've got a teenage son,

or daughter, right? You know, you're trying to tell them you know, don't do this. It's just not the right thing to do. Now they know better. You don't know what you're talking about. You You don't know. Right? You You haven't lived the life that I've left, right. You don't know what this industry that are out there. Right.

As reason we were facing all our teams, man.

Okay.

You know, and then what is it? You know?

Can you get me a lawyer to get me out of prison now, please? Yeah, you are right. So I mean, it's all happened to us, right? I think we've all done that. true or not? Right? So if that's true, just between human beings, how about God? Isn't it possible that you might think you know, better, right? But in reality, you don't know better? God knows better? Right. So our question is Muslim

irrelevant. You can go on and on about Islam, there's no Islam, that your punishment isn't your core. And this and this. Our question really is, is the Quran from Allah? Not? We believe it is. And we think we can prove to you that it is. I mean, when I say prove we can give you evidence that I don't think any sensible person would reject that evidence, right? So this is the question, right? is, so this is what our religion is based upon, we surrender ourselves to the Creator, we will surrender ourselves to God, because we believe that that knowledge that that thing that God has given us is from the Creator of the heavens and the earth, you know, and God knows best.

God knows best, what degree of fear? Is it that you need? What threat of punishment is the right threat of punishment? In order for a person to stop stealing? What threat of punishment Do you need in order to stop people committing adultery? and fornication? And how bad is that? And what is the impact of that on society? You may think it's nothing. Right? You may think that it's nothing, because some things and then that's another thing you can all experience. Sometimes you don't only find out until a long time, even until it's too late. And then you say, Oh, if only I had known that in the beginning, right, you only find out it's not that everything right straight away that you

realize, Oh, that was the wrong thing to know, sometimes you only discover that it was the wrong thing to do after a long time.

And this is the thing that God knows the long term effects. God knows what is going to happen over the long time. Sometimes even we human beings don't live long enough, we don't live long enough to be able to see the effect of something could happen to generations ahead.

Or three. And our human experience doesn't allow us even to collate that. But God knows that God knows the effects. Right? He is down the line, right? of allowing this particular thing that is considered a sin. You let people fall in a cage, you let people you know, participate in certain acts. And so, but you may think what's the harm is, you know, this and that, but you only sometimes know the harm down the line, when it's too late. I'll give you an example. I'll give you an example. If you listen to some of my talks about women in Islam, and I gave a talk about this in England, just recently, they might put it up on YouTube, so you might catch it. Right? And for those of like,

like a bit more tough speaking from being you'll find it there. Right. You know, look at this so called enduring revolution of the Western world, the liberation of women. Okay, no doubt, right, that women in the West previously have been extremely oppressed. Right? They weren't allowed property, or when they got married, right. Until today, by the way, most women they get married, I think in Norway, they still they take their husbands name. Yeah. They become, you know, Mrs. Benson, right, or whatever. Right. Okay. And you know, she wasn't that before. But now she's that goes back to right. Not long ago, when women literally were owned by the husband, when she got married, her

property automatically became her husband's property. We forget, right? We forget that. Before, it's not long ago that women had no say in the society. Right? They couldn't vote, they couldn't inherit. So they were very restricted. So there's no doubt in contrast to that what women experienced today in the West is really good. But, you know, I'm talking about let's talk about going back to the issue of long term long term effects, right? You see, this is the short term thinking. In the short term, Western, the Western world in general, thought that women's liberation is a good thing in the perspective of getting women to work. Why? Because according to their philosophy, a rich society is

a successful society, because what wealth equals happiness. So the more wealth we have, the more successful we are. Now, what's the point and having half the population staying at home, when that half the population could be out working and contributing to the economy and making us richer, and therefore making us more successful? So there it starts. No women, you don't want to stay at home, you need to come you need to work, right? Why you want to stay at home, you're going to be a slave chained to the sink slave to your husband, slave to your children, whatever, you know, you beneath that, right? You believe that you need to be liberated. Yeah, you need to come you need to work,

right? Yeah, earn your own money, spend your own money.

Okay, and the women say, well, that's good. You know, right. So what happens women start going up to work. Okay, what do we have right? 2030 years on

Right.

Some economists starts figuring out, oh, gosh, we've got a problem. Now the problem is,

right. The problem is, is that since women are all working, and they've got now so enthusiastic about being liberated, they're not having babies anymore. And what happens to society where you stop having babies?

If no women have babies, what's going to happen to your population?

You're gonna die outs.

Right? You're going to die out. And lo and behold, the Western world like a light bulb, oh, deer

populations are dying out.

It's true. No, it's true. And you know, it's true. Right? I got some real sincere advice for Norwegians, if you're afraid about Muslims taking over have more babies.

Yeah, plain and simple. Right. But you know what, I tell you the simple truth. They won't do it because they're too addicted now. Right. They're too addicted. But you know what, this is the short sightedness. You know, I mean, you think it was really sensible women stop having babies population dies or do a problem for our country. But no money, money, money, let's improve our economy. Right? I mean, it's ridiculous. It's so simple, right? But that's it. That's the you only discovered that two gentlemen. And you know what economists now, they realize that when six no sorry, when 30% of your population reaches the age of 65, which is retirement age, the economy of your your country is

no longer viable, because the amount of money you need to spend spend on pensions and caring for old people exceeds the amount that your economy can generate. And that is exactly what is happening in Europe now. Right. And believe me, I want to tell you brothers and sisters, yeah. They say, Oh, we let you Muslims come here. Right? We let you come here. And you don't even respect our ways, right? Yeah. Rubbish. Right. They need you sohbats. Right. They need you. They need new people in order to repopulate the country and continue the economy. That's what they need. Right? That's what they need. Right? And you know, they would love to have white blond people like them, right. But the

problem is, Eastern Europe has a worse population problem than them. Right? They their demographics are even worse. Generally, in the industrial countries in Europe, they don't have enough people to repopulate. Okay, and England is an exception. You know why it was an exception? Because the immigrants are having more babies than everyone else. That's why. Right? So don't be fooled by this, oh, you better be grateful, right? Take off your hijabs, right, anyway, you just fall into the same problem that they fall into, you'll get liberated, we'll stop having babies and then we will die out which may be what they want. I don't know. Right? But anyway, the point being apart from you know,

the silliness of it. All right, apart from the silliness of it all. The fact is all I'm trying to illustrate by all of that, right. Okay. And it actually goes back to my point anyway, to finish that what I'm trying to illustrate is how you can think short term, and you'll only realize when it's too late, the mistake you made, right. But you know, what if it only followed the guidance of God, right. And you know, what, you don't even need to be a Muslim is there in the Bible, as well, as Christianity used to teach that go forth and multiply Christians used to be concerned with having lots of kids? Because that's not what because that's what God said. They didn't know about

economics, right? They didn't know about economic theory, they didn't know about population demographics. They did it because what God said do it, right. It's the same, right? But you leave the guidance of God for the limited, very limited confused notions of human beings and see what you end up with. Right. And this is by no means by the way, I don't want to I want to counter something. I am not saying that women shouldn't be educated, actually, women should be more educated than men. And the reason is, okay, the reason is because the one who teaches the children and who embarks with them morality, and who teaches them and the future generations of women, okay? Women have skillsets

that men do not have vocabulary with my meeting exception, okay? They have vocabulary skill sets, okay? They have the ability to communicate, and that's actually why in many places in the workplace women do very well is because they have very good communication skills. Okay. And we live in a society that's very much more industry based anymore is communication based, right? But those skills are built by

Allah actually is interesting in some of these things. Even if you believe in evolution, or you believe in God, you actually come with the same results. You come with the same results. You know, evolution will tell you that you women are, you know, biologically programmed for that. And actually, we believe that Allah created them. So the result is the same. Right? And so this is the thing we believe know that Islam has the wisdom. Islam is not saying women can't work. And Islam certainly does not say that women should not be educated. And you know, anyone, I don't know how but I don't care how big his beard is, right? goes around saying that women should not be educated, we

should block this schools. He is mad. He is insane. Right? I don't really necessarily believe in fact, I don't really believe what I read in the newspapers at all right? But that's certainly not for Muslim women should be educated because they need to teach the next generation. That's very, very important. Right. Okay. And so Islam is really encouraging that, okay, and it's Islam has this division of labor. Okay, that's right. God has made men maintainers and protectors of women. It's the division of labor. And it's actually the most efficient way. But homosapien succeeded primarily because they divided labor, according to evolutionary theory. And Neanderthals failed, because they

didn't. Neanderthals failed, because basically men and women did the same thing. homo sapien succeeded because they divided labor between men and women. Right, check it out. Interesting. Which makes you know, European heading towards Neanderthal times. Right? Okay. So according to their theories, okay, so brothers and sisters, the point being All I'm trying to illustrate is the benefit and the wisdom of following the guidance of God in our offense. Okay. So this ultimately leads us to conclude, right, that the real question we have to ask the reasonable question that needs to be asked, okay, is what is the best way for us to reach the goals that we all have, we have the same

goals. Right now, Muslims are quite happy to live in Western society, and we will be good citizens, and we will obey the laws of the country. And by and large, I mean, that is exactly what our religion teaches us to do. Right? It may not be God's law, but God tells us that we have to respect those laws in the country in which we live. And we have to respect the, you know, the government and we don't believe in violent revolution. Right? Okay, if we believe in changing society, is by changing people's opinions and people's ideas about what is the best way to do things, right. This is the process. This is the way that inshallah the religion of Islam teaches us, right. But you find

that and this is what you find with the Prophet, and the time of the Prophet, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he engaged the people who talked with them. But it was not the Prophet. And the Muslims who started fighting, they were not the ones who started fighting.

It was the non Muslims who started torturing and killing and imprisoning and making the life of the Muslims terrible. In fact, they put up this for 13 years, it was so bad and so severe, that many of them had to fleet avicennia a Christian country because of the difficulty they were being put through. So the Muslims didn't start it. That's not our way. We don't. Right. This is the reality.

You know, and I think that, you know, really, this is something that should be reflected within the Muslim. So, as well, my brothers and sisters, really, I want to give you all a piece of advice. You know, I want to give you all a piece of advice. Okay. And a piece of advice I want to give you all right, is I've been asked this again, all we have been attacked by the media here in Norway, we've been facing it three weeks of nonstop attack, right, has been going on and on and on. What's the solution? That's a very big question, what's the solution? Right. But you know what, there's something you can go away with today. Right? The real question, I would like to ask you, how many of

you have got neighbors who are not Muslim? Hands up?

Why isn't your neighbor sitting next to you right here today?

Right.

Why is your neighbor not sitting right next to you? Today?

I'm not asking you to answer that question. You can answer it yourself. And you can also think about how you're going to answer it to Allah when you meet along the Day of Judgment. Right. Okay. The question is, if you really want to know, you see, how many Muslims are there in Oslo about you got an idea?

50,000 how many people live in Oslo?

So what percentage is that my math is really bad.

10% right.

Okay. 10% Okay, so think about that. I mean, I'm still a bit confused, right? If 10% of Oslo are actually Muslim, and really, if every Muslim was treating the neighbor, the way Islam tells you to treat your neighbor, I can't see how any party who attacked Muslims would get an 80% increase in their vote.

Right?

true or not? Yeah. Okay. So you know what, don't go crying about the media, this the media that?

Right? Okay. The media, that's the media that right? You know, you need to we need to behave like Muslims, brothers and sisters, right? We need to show that we can contribute to society, we all want to make the world a better place in which to live, we all have that same objective, we may disagree about the means that we use to achieve the end. But our goal is the same. Right? We all want ultimately, the same things. There's no disagreement with amongst us about that. Okay, so brothers and sisters, I am really pleading with you that the best thing that you can do is learn to be good Muslims is behave the way the religion teaches you with the right morals, the right character,

right? The kind treatment, think how, as a Muslim, you can contribute to society make it a better place. And you know what actions speak louder than words, right? We can give speeches, we can give talks, we can, but let's actually show through our example, and through our behavior, okay. Really what our religion is about this is the best thing that we can do, rather than just soccer like that. That's it for this talk.

And what about those people who say, I'm not suing OSHA or anything else?

The question is about different sects in Islam, and the Shia and the Sunni? And what do I think about that? And what do I think about people who say, I'm not a shill suddenly? Or, you know, I just follow the religion of Islam and so on. I mean, ideally, yes. We would love to be able to say, Yeah, I just follow Islam, I follow the Quran, I follow the Prophet. And to tell you the truth, that's what I say to people sometimes. But in reality, it's not always helpful. You know, that's not always helpful. Because when you're talking to some people write

it is actually useful to be able to identify yourself, okay, saying, No, I don't think that this particular idea is right, or I don't think that particular idea is right. And the way we do that, instead of explaining it all, is we just, you know, give a title to it, you know, like, I'm Sunni, or Shia, or I'm this or that, or whatever. So it explains yourself something about your Outlook, yeah, and the way you perceive things, but in reality, brothers and sisters, very shortly and very succinctly, you know, we should follow what the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said in this regard, which is authentically narrated from him, and it's also something that reflects the

generality of what is in the Quran, that clearly mentions the prohibition of us splitting into sects and into groups, and the prohibitions in the Quran about that are very strong. And the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he said, cling to my son, and the son of the Holy Father Raja Deen and bite it with your teeth, and beware of the new things in the religion. So this is what we should do, we should follow the Quran, as is explained by the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam, or else we will give any interpretation we'd like to know we need to understand the Quran the way the Prophet explain it, and who are the best people who understood the Prophet, the people who lived with the

Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam. They saw the Prophet pray, they were with sal Allahu Allah, he was the Prophet when He fasted when he made Hajj. So when he lived the Quran, and they saw that so they are the ones who really understood what was meant.

Best that's on so the best of them with the whole of Russia, meaning Abu Bakr and Omar and of van and Allie, first of all, by all of the companions especially those of knowledge of

Abdullah Ibn Abbas. Okay, and

an Abdullah bin Mossad. And you know, these are some of the scholars from amongst the Sahaba. So if we look to their guidance, if we look to their understanding, this is more likely that we are going to find the right understanding of Islam. Okay. And that's really what we should try to emphasize on. And if we all did that, then I'm not saying there will not be any differences. You know, of course, there will be differences, you know, what is important is to understand the difference. What is important is to understand the differences that are permissible, and there are some differences that are permissible, and there are some that are not, there are some differences that are a product

of permissible interpretations, and the others that are not that is really important to understand the difference between those two things. Yeah. Because we have to follow the guidance. Now, if I'm the only one, and I don't mean this, you know, people take this in the wrong way. But I what I mean to say, if there's only a few of us following that guidance, rightly and everyone, for whatever reason, is not, I don't let go of the guidance to just join the big group. Yeah. Know, what is I have to follow the guidance, right. So this is something very important challenges for your question system.

Muslim

marquesses is general. Okay. It goes back to the discussion that you had

that believes that life equals suffering.

I want to know that I mean,

ever I complain about my life since I was a kid, I heard this from my parents, my mother that you know, we all are here in this world, we were condemned to live this war. And we are condemned to suffer

because of the heat that our forefathers like.

Okay, I'm here at static route.

And the 10 years that I mean, there are 114 on

Silla. rukmani rocky was mentioned in the Holy Quran.

What I cannot understand is that first of all, I am an evil person, I know myself.

I have pretty a good amount of people that I hate. I hate them from the bottom of my heart and

that

lets you in on sci fi, observe with my eyes that they are suffering or being punished because it seemed that they did against me. I will not accept it. Okay.

So my question to you is that why is God with you so merciful?

So kind, so dear, and so great. Okay. He, first of all,

he people will pay

for the session, he also enjoys punishing them.

afterlife. Okay.

And why

is the sin of our forefathers? Hmm, he just

exasperate. Okay. I think we get the idea, brother.

Okay.

I don't know if anyone came to my if anyone came to my lecture. Yeah. If anyone came to my lectures yesterday,

you know, within that lecture is contained something of an answer to that? Yeah.

And something of the answer to that is, first of all, I would have to say that with all respect to the question, it's the most strange thing I ever heard from a human being that I hate people the bottom of my heart, but I can't bear those people to be punished.

I think if that's really what you mean, I just can't you know, understand that you really hate them that much.

The reaction of most human beings is when you really hate someone and I think history bears evidence to this. Yeah. Is that they take revenge.

In fact, most of the best movies of the revenge movies, right? Because you just think, yeah, you give it to them. Right? You know, you rape kids, you did this, you did that. Take him out, you know, and you when you see it you feel and that's just the movie. Right? So if that really happens to you in the human condition, right, what you have said I'm sorry contradicts what I have observed what history tells us about human condition. You know, now you can't because it will have a long discussion between you and me. Okay? Secondly, okay. The second thing is, is that your mother taught you something wrong? Okay, so maybe there's the root of the problem there. Right? If your boots up

with a wrong idea from the beginning, what comes from that may be a wrong idea. Okay. You see, no, Allah subhanaw taala did not create, you know, suffering. Life is a test. Yes, life is a test. Okay. So this is the reality. And sometimes the test is not suffering. Sometimes the test is in pleasure. In fact, the worst tests sometimes are from pleasure. Right? Why did the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, I don't leave a greater test for the men of this oma than the women.

Why? It's because you know what, there's such suffering? Well, maybe, but, you know, it's because of the pleasure of the woman. Okay? So not all the life and the test of life is from suffering. Okay. But we have to go back. And we have to say and listen, what we follow. Is this as Muslims, what we believe is this, we ask the question, is there a god or not? We talked about this yesterday, the argument, and the brother is only reflected that argument is the argument of the atheist, which they put forward is an emotional argument. The argument about suffering in life and so on and so forth, is nothing to do is as to whether God exists or not. Yeah, it's got nothing to do as to whether God

exists or not.

Right?

We talked about how do we know that God exists? We went through that I can't go through that all again. Right? Then we ask the next question. Is the core and from God or not? And is Mohammed the messenger or not? Now, really, some people could look at this world, and by the way they have, and they have said that the god of this world is a cruel God who loves punishment and torture and this and that, right? And even you will find the way they worship the God is by doing these type of things. Right? So some people may have reached that conclusion, but it doesn't mean that there is not a god. We have to go back and we have to say, is there a god or not? Okay? And we can say yes,

how do we know there's a God? Because we live in an organized systemized universe and the most, you know, sensible explanation is that there is a creator. But then if we want to answer these questions, why, why is the world like this? Why is this suffering? Why are these things why is this what is going to happen? Okay, after we die, then that's not knowledge that we can get from our intellect. We can't. That's only knowledge that you can understand from Revelation. That's only knowledge you can understand from revelations only if God tells you, this is the reason you have been created. This is what is going to happen when you die.

And this is what we believe the Quran contains. If Allah subhanaw taala, punishes people in Hellfire for eternity. And to say that God enjoys it. I don't know exactly where that's from. Okay. Okay, but certainly, if Allah punishing someone and he will most certainly punish people with the most terrible and severe punishment, more than we can even imagine. And the people will stay there Holly Dean efeito, they will never come out of the hellfire. Right? Well, God will roll their skins and recreate their skins and roast the skins so they can taste the punishment. And that's the way the nerves are, you get burned once. If you as a scientific fact, you get burned once you don't feel the

pain after that. So Allah will create the skin again so they can continue to experience that terrible pain. Right? So yes, there is no doubt that Hellfire is a punishment, even beyond what you can possibly imagine. But if Allah punishes anyone in the Hellfire, that is most certainly because they deserve it.

And I will tell you the other thing, it's because they chose that they chose it.

Allah does not pick people up and just throw them in the Hellfire randomly. This not that lot paradise.

Hellfires, whatever, like we throw cards on a table or something like that? No.

Right? People who go to hell go because they chose to do that. They chose to take that path.

They saw it clearly, they knew this was the path to hell. And they continued upon that path. And they chose it. They knew that's what they were going, and they chose that they got what they deserved.

Right?

And actually the injustice, the injustice, of denying What is subpanel? If you just think what Allah is asking, there is one Hadith. For me, really, this sums everything up.

A man will stand in front of Allah on the Day of Judgment. And Allah will say to him, all my servants,

if you have the world, and everything in it, would you now ransom that to save you from the Hellfire? And he will say, Yes, my lord. And Allah will say to him, I asked for you less than that. I only asked that you should worship Me and worship nothing else besides me. That's all Allah asked, is the only thing Allah asked that we worship Him. And we don't make shift and we don't worship anything along with him. That's it. So Allah is asking from us, but you couldn't even do that. So what do you deserve? What does that person deserve? So they're just their punishment is just and unless panatela punishes them justly? And that is what I believe. Absolutely. So whatever it is,

they get that because that is what they are deserving of. Right? And whoever chooses to obey Allah, then you know what, they don't deserve paradise. Because whatever you do, however much good you do, you don't deserve you can never earn Paradise by your deeds. In fact, the prophet muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, No one goes to paradise because of their deeds, they said, not even you azula he said, not even me, unless Allah bestows His mercy upon me, paradise, you cannot earn it. Because the beauty and the blessing of Paradise is way beyond whatever amount of deeds you can do. That's the mercy of Allah. That is the mercy of Allah. Right? And how is the mercy of Allah,

the mercy of Allah is this right? If you do one wrong deed, Allah marks it down as one wrong deed, you do one wrong deed, Allah marks it down as one wrong deed. If you think of doing a wrong deed, but you stop yourself from doing it, all the marks it down as a good deed. If you intend to do a good deed, and even if you don't do it, Allah marks you down as a good deed. If you do a good deed and you fulfill it, Allah rewards it 10 to 700 times and then Allah multiplies it on top of that, that is the mercy of Allah, right? And then you know what, however many sins you do, whatever you do, even the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he said, if your sins were as great as the heavens

and the earth, the heavens and the earth, my God, our galaxy, it's 10,000 light years across our galaxy, and it's one of millions in the known universe. But if your sins were as big as the heavens on earth, and you were to ask Allah to forgive you, and you will not making any partners with him, not only would ALLAH forgive you, but he will actually give you good deeds nearly as great as the evil deeds that you did to replace it. That is the Muslim.

So, you know, brothers and sisters, what does the person who turns away from that mercy, what do they really deserve? You know, Allah is the most just, this is what I believe brothers and sisters, and Allah is the most merciful, he is the most compassionate, he forgives those who seek forgiveness. So all of us brothers and sisters, let's turn to Allah right now, let's make Toba for our sins because we've all got sins. And this allows us ask Allah subhanaw taala to forgive us for all the evil that we have done in your ability.

Question for the

English is no problem. English is not that good to

use.

Very surprising, because

because

he doesn't know what our borders are.

Max's our car sled to our house.

And that's the house of our intentions. And I think everybody with good intentions, I think is very supportive.

Because we might be celebrities

for being hungry. They are trying to make a picture of

what exactly.

My question is about the Norwegian society. It was myself.

Since you come from England and Norway, you're doing

why everybody does it.

Make them smile, and

they don't understand why the government,

some people, and especially the media, he hates Islam so much.

They don't understand because these people are born here. And they understand why the behavior is. So.

Yeah.

See, brother, I think anyone who came to my talks yesterday, will probably understand, because I explained that I talked about how every society is trying to get you to conform to a particular idea. They call it socialization. So every society has a type of idea that they want everyone to conform to. Yeah. So if you break away from that idea, yeah, you feel threatened. But you know, I think the other point being is that maybe we are,

if we say that we are being too kind, because there are certainly politicians and people who are just happy to rely upon people's ignorance and fear. That's it. And actually, sometimes, very sadly, a society will try to create a state of fear in order to continue to control people. If you want to watch a very, very beneficial program that talks about this, you should watch a program called the power of nightmares, the power of nightmares, the documentary, I'm sure you can find it on YouTube. Yeah,

was produced, I think, by Channel Four or the BBC. And it was exactly about this, how the media and the governments are using Islam in order, you know, feel of Islam in order to control people in order to control them. Because one of the way you control people is through fear. So it's a very, very worthwhile program to watch that. I want to go back to the first thing that you mentioned, brother, right. Again, what and I am sure this is what most people understood, but what I really meant, you see, as I said, about paradise, is that you can't whatever you do, you can't deserve paradise. However much good you do, you don't deserve it, because the good of Paradise is way beyond

whatever you could earn with your deeds. And that's how I feel about being a Muslim. I feel about Islam, that the peace and the tranquility and the joy and the happiness and the guidance that that Allah has given me in my life, through being a Muslim is way beyond any good things I could have done in my life to deserve that. You see, so the goodness that Islam has produced the the benefit that Islam has produced in my life, for me, personally, is so much more than whatever good deeds I could have done, but I'm sure the brother is right that you know, if people inshallah have goodness in their heart, you know, Allah subhanaw taala will guide them to Islam. You know, but I have to

say, I, I used to think when I first started practicing Islam, I actually used to think maybe Allah is just, you know, making me Muslim, and then I will leave Islam, so he's going to punish me even more, because of the bad things that I did. Because when I started thinking about all the things that I had done, right, I just thought how can I deserve How can I deserve this mercy? How can I deserve the mercy of Allah and I swear it was only the brother was mentioning. It was only used to I used to open up the Quran. And I used to read Bismillah R Rahman Rahim In the Name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, The Most Merciful. It was seeing that again and again, I just kept on thinking,

you know, reminding myself allies, the most compassionate and Allah is the Most Merciful. So again, you know, hamdulillah Allah guided us to Islam brothers and sisters. And you know, there's another thing I wanted to mention.

I didn't get to mention this because it was so out of time. But it is something I really think is so important. You know, brothers and sisters,

I don't think that most of you can ever appreciate

the reality of how lucky you are to be Muslim.

Right? And I will tell you why. I'll tell you the difference between me and you.

Those of you who are born into Islam, it may be that you will do haram things. It may be that you will fall in a cage and you will. And by the way, please don't let shaytaan make an excuse in your head and saying oh Abdur Rahim. He smoked marijuana, or Abdur Rahim, he had girlfriends, and he was okay in the end, right? You don't know you're gonna die. And you don't know that you may go further from Islam. Right? So don't let shaytaan do that to you. But back to my point. Even if you do all of those things, and you do worse, every one of you knows where to go back to, don't you? You know, okay, I do this, I do that. But I know that I can go back to Islam, you know, you know that there's

a place to go back to, you know, this the Quran? You know, this the guidance of Allah? How about the person think about this? How about a person who doesn't even know whether his guidance or not?

He is so confused, or she's so confused. They don't even know can you can't possibly really imagine? How deep is that? darkness. You know, imagine his whole school, his whole university is in pitch black. And you find yourself in here. And you're wandering around? And you don't even know if there's a door that leads out? You don't even know that? Do you think that's the same as the person who knows that somewhere? There's a door? And if I get that door, I can step out? What if you don't even think there's a door? What do you do? You don't even know there's a door? How is the despair of this one, just compared to the confusion of the other? So this is the darkness of someone who

doesn't even know that Allah has sent guidance, it doesn't even know there's an answer. So having the blessing really, of Islam, for that one is sold. So it really Subhanallah when you find it, you so you appreciate it. Because you really find that hamdulillah there is that way that you have found that Allah subhanaw taala has guided us

if I heard something about really nice about Norway, about Norwegian culture, that I really liked it when I was I was looking at all those statues, you know, the statues of all the people naked. And

I was thinking as a side point, you know, you know, that little screaming kids reminds me a little bit of Norwegian politics right now. Right? Because really, honestly, for someone to say to someone to say yeah, that Muslims are taking over because they want halal food and separate prayer rooms reminds me that it'll streaming that it'll screaming kids.

And honestly, that's the sort of stuff you'd expect from you know, the kindergarten kindergarten. Yeah.

You say?

Yeah, okay. You don't expect that from mature grown up people. Oh, and I wanted to mention the really nice thing that I heard about Norwegian culture. Yeah, I remember now you see. And it really beautiful thing. I don't remember what it's cool. Because one of those words is a bit tricky. But you remind me,

we were going around the statues and we were talking about Actually, I was saying apart from of course statues not being something allowed in Islam, and nudity. Like that's not something we really approve of. But I said Actually, it's something that was really nice, because what was it was talking about all of it seems to me to be about family, about people and about family was a lot to do with kids, family, men, women fighting, loving thinking this and that, but it was all and you know, throughout history statues have been about what the prince the king, the general that this or that. But these were the statues about people, right, and their lives. And you know, and I thought

it was just something quite touching. And then the brothers were telling me, you know, something about Norwegian culture is that is considered really bad to show off. Yeah. And so he said, even for example, if you're a businessman, and you go to a business meeting in a, you know, a really smart designers shoe, and you're watching you're like trying to show off and this and that and the slickest. I'm the smartest

That said you can even lose the business deal because of that, right? Actually, they are very, you know, Norwegian culture, you're supposed to be very modest and not to show off as a that is a really beautiful thing. Mashallah, that's a really nice cultural habit to have. Like, that also means I don't have to walk around in the soup. I was in Norway, on the loaches of Iceland. So I was just pointing out that's a really nice characteristic.

This is the last question the last one, please. Oh, and it's written down.

I can't believe this is the question. You've asked the last question.

Now that we live in modern days, how can we marry more wives and still say it's fair?

And even saying the one about you know, sex in Islam is not relevant. I mean, you know, okay, brothers and sisters. Okay.

I will give you my perspective. I will give you my perspective on this.

Brothers and sisters, I will tell you absolutely. I think polygamy is Mashallah one of the beautiful things that Allah subhanaw taala has given to this religion. It is a truly beautiful and amazing thing. And it's a gift Allah has given in Islam. So what I believe, and I believe that if people practice polygamy properly, it will be a blessing for the woman, first of all, and for the man, actually, secondly, right? I believe also, that polygamy is actually really prescribed for the benefit of the woman more than it is prescribed for the needs of the man. Right? And I'm talking about women in general. Okay. And the reasons for that are because it allows the, those sisters who

are divorced or who are widowed or not, or whatever, okay, to find an opportunity of companionship with a man that I'm talking from real experience, this is true, not just in the past, but today as well, that they will not be able to find in a halal way. Otherwise.

Okay, so there are many, many, these are just some of the benefits of polygamy the other benefits that we could list if it was practiced properly. Okay, is that the sisters, and that's how it should be the sisters in Islam could help each other, to educate children, to care for the families. Okay, to mix together to live together to support one another. The benefits educationally, emotionally, economically, socially, if it was practiced properly, or absolutely tremendous. So I reiterate that polygamy is one of the great blessings that Allah subhanaw taala has given this religion, obviously, from the man's point of view, it permits the man to, you know, satisfy certain desires that he might

have, that would not be able to be satisfied only by one woman. Okay. So these are some aspects of the man but of course, with it comes responsibility. However, brother to the last question, there's no point putting your hand up. No.

Okay. So, so, on the other hand, brothers and sisters, I have this to say, Okay.

I have this to say,

the reality for us living here in the West, is, first of all, first of all, that polygamy is something that although we know that many men have wives and girlfriends and mistresses, and visit prostitutes at the same time in the West, we know that including the presidents of America, right, including the Prime Minister, presidents of France, right, I think even I don't know if Denmark or this quite a few, they come out of the closet, and we find that when they die, they have wives, they have mistresses, who have kids, a whole separate family. So we see this going on, and it's perfectly acceptable to them. Right, but for some mysterious reason for a man to do this legally and openly,

right? It's something they don't accept, but that's a fact. polygamy is not something that we have been ordered to do in Islam. It's something that is an option that is there if it is needed, but my

general opinion about the reality of polygamy, okay, is that it is something that for all practical purposes, is very, very difficult to practice and to do it fairly in the West. And that the reason for that is because, number one financially, the burden is huge, just in order to support one family, the burden is huge in order to do that. So there's the financial responsibility. Secondly, there is the question of time, the way life is in the West, is that we are so busy being missed by the mincing machine, right. So busy working, so busy spending so much time working. And if we add to that, brothers and sisters, the efforts that we should be putting into giving down,

right, and the efforts that we should be putting into improving the community and the society in which we live, we should take up a lot of our spare time.

Okay, you will, in fact, in reality find that you will not have time to do that. So, you know, my position concerning myself personally, for example, is I don't see how I could be fair, or just to my wife, and my children, if I was to get, you know, if I was to get married again. Because as it is, I don't spend enough time with my wife or my children as it is, I don't give them as it is the full rights that I should give them. And that's part of the nature of the society in which we live. And that is something that you have to take into account, when you think of these things. Because you have a responsibility, your wife is not only your wife, right? She is your sister in Islam, as

well. You have duties and responsibility, okay? to your wife and your kids. And it's very, very important that you do not oppress your family. Okay? So these are things that should really, really be considered. Now I'm not giving a fatwa here, that this is haram or this or that whatever. Okay. But the reality is that I generally believe that, you know, if brothers come to me and say, Oh, brother, I really want to get married again, I say, No, I know, Brother, you really want to get married again? Believe me, I really want to get married again. You know, but don't do it. Just don't do it. Okay, No, brother, this one, I said, No, brother, don't do it. You want my advice? Don't be

patient. Right? Find the find what you need from your wife, because it will destroy you. It'll break you. It will break your family, one or the other, it will break this wife or that wife. So if you really don't really want to see your kids very often, and you want it to end in disaster, I'm not saying it will, it may and sometimes I'm the law, you know, people do manage and brothers and sisters do manage, you know, to do this thing properly, and to benefit from it, all of them. And it happens under there are good examples. But unfortunately, those good examples are not many, partly because the men do not know how to treat women properly. And the women do not know how to treat the

men properly. And the truth is we don't fear Allah subhanaw taala enough. That's the reality. We don't fear Allah enough. Right? So that's my advice. You know, you can take it or leave it. If you ask me in this society, I think by and large, to get another wife, generally it ends up being not fair. Basically, because I think the wife and the kids suffer in a way that in other times in other situations, they wouldn't. It's just my opinion, it's not a fatwa, Allah Subhana Allah knows best you can take it or leave it. So brothers and sisters