Abdur Rahman ibn Yusuf Mangera – Challenges of Post Modernism
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If you look around humanity
has never been able to exist without religion.
It's true that some people ignore religion in the, all their lives.
In fact, some people they're supposed to be of a religion.
They're supposed to be Muslim, Christian, Jewish, or of any of
the other religions of the world, but they are pretty much ignored
religion throughout their life.
Maybe once a year, maybe on some occasion, maybe during marriage
and so on. During the 19th and 20th centuries, for the first time
in history, perhaps
certain countries became atheist,
very new phenomenon. Certain countries became atheists, and
others became secular, not atheists. But secular.
It's also true that some people, obviously, wherever they are in
the world, they wish that there is no religion that there was no
religion.
Today, maybe 5% of the world is atheist. Atheist means completely
denying God.
Perhaps another 10% is a religious.
And it's even true that religion or rather, the misuse of religion,
has caused a lot of suffering.
But it's also true that regimes based on atheistic ideologies,
like communism, and perhaps even Nazism, as such, have caused even
more suffering, despite the fact that they may have not been
attached to any religion, or may have been anti religion.
In fact, many of them often made religions, out of the atheistic
philosophies, that he became very militant, as though you must
believe this.
Absence of God means that do what you want.
But then, when you force everybody to believe,
and to follow,
to dress in a particular way, then that's just the new form of
religion without God,
if you can define it as such, but it is clear generally that the
vast majority of humanity
loves religion, or whatever religion that may be, and has
always done so.
At any rate, today, it is about 85% of the world's population of
about 7.4 billion people belong to a religion, out of which about 2
billion
would identify with being Christian and about 1.7 to 1.8
billion as Muslims. And then you've got the Jews, and you've
got the Hindus and numerous others.
So now, the topic was, what was the topic? secularism, modernism,
liberalism, was it post modernism in there as well post modernity,
I've even forgotten what the title was. But to be honest, that title
would put a lot of people off in the masjid. And the reason is that
it's a very technical, very academic title. I mean, if you go
online, just to try to understand the difference between post
modernism and post modernity,
it will cause your head to spin, then try to contrast that with
modernity and modernism. And there you've got four terms there that
are very confusing. And they're not necessarily even agreed upon.
Though broadly, they may be agreed agreed upon. So I'm not going to
be speaking on any kind of technical or academic level for
that matter. We're on the 31st of December, New Year's Eve program
for our mashallah our beautiful brothers sitting here and our
other brothers and sisters, sitting and listening in the
comfort of their homes. And also our mashallah our young children
here who are sitting here as well. So, clearly,
I don't want to bore you. The food is going to come in about an hour
or so I asked that question first because I don't want to be a
hinderance and an obstacle to your food.
So, let me just speak on some very general level of trying to
understand some of the challenges all of this brings up now. We
Maybe understanding of some of some of these challenges, I want
to just link some of the challenges that we face today to
some of these concepts and ideas, just so that we get an
understanding of what things were before, what thing, what kind of
things are happening, and what the future possibly holds in store for
us. Because, as you'll see, a lot of these issues are quite
complicated, and very complex.
Well, first and foremost, if we just try to understand modernity
to postmodernity, it's a very general idea I'm going to provide
when you say modernity, or modern society, we've gone past it, by
the way,
why some people still relate to that. This is the modern age.
According to many of the philosophers, modernity has
passed. We're in post modernity, right? This is just to give you an
understanding, so that we don't misuse these terms. Sometimes, of
course, these terms they can be defined as you wish. But this is
generally what philosophers see them as, somewhat confusingly,
modern society refers to what
modern society refers to European society, between 1650
How many years ago is that?
That's four centuries ago, nearly four centuries ago, right? Which
is less than four centuries ago. 1650, to about 1950. There's
difference of opinion as to exactly when so called modern
society, ends and posts, modern society begins. So modern society
is gone. Right?
Some, there's probably a small few that still believe it's on. But
generally, modern society is between 1650 to about the 1950s.
Some steps are 1970, some say even up to 1980s. Right. But clearly,
we can see that anybody who was around alive around 1980, and has
been alive since then, right? Those who are about 40 years of
age, right? The millennials, they have a bit of a, they live in a
different world, they just see a different world, they can't see
much of a contrast. But if you've been
when computers had windows 3.1, and a floppy disk of about two
megabytes,
your phone has four gigabyte of RAM today. And we had two
megabytes of computer hard disk.
Right? That was a crazy time.
Cassettes
SubhanAllah. I mean, I don't even want to go into the vinyl records,
because I've never been one of those. But that does bring a lot
of nostalgia back to a lot of people who are of that age. But
anyway, you've seen how the world has changed massively, how you can
store literally 1000s of books on a small piece of hardware.
Whereas before that would be absolutely impossible. The
transfer of knowledge and all of these things.
So that is modernism, that's basically the Modern society has
ended.
Essentially, what is different according to the post modernists
is that
those stable institutions,
which used to bind us together,
they have much less influence now. That is what makes the difference
between the
the modern society and the post modern society, it will become
clear as I continue, now we have the rise of globalization, new
media technologies, as I've just described,
individuals today,
a much more free to construct their own culture and identity. As
never, they've never been able to before. You had to conform before.
And now you can have your own individual culture in your own
home, within your own little group, a subculture as such, some
of the key features of modern society.
And I'm only mentioning those that challenge us. There's, there's
many I mean, I'm not, this is not some kind of exhaustive survey or
comparison. This is just for us to understand that these are the
things that are challenging us. If you look at a modern society,
which was from 1650 to 1950s, people's knowledge became slowly
more derived from scientific and rational thinking,
rather than religious faith. This was between 1650 to 1950. More
increasingly so. People were all already more inclining towards
scientific and rational thinking,
rather than religious faith,
magic or superstition,
religion, religious faith, magic or superstition.
Now
What we understand from here is that there's a good aspect here.
But then there's also a very challenging aspect here. It's
great that people don't just relate everything to magical
hamdulillah you'd have less Jin doctors around, right?
superstition is a bad thing. It's not in Islam to do that walking
under a ladder, no problem. We don't believe now Theertha Ville
Islam, as a Prophet sallallahu sallam said, if the crow flies, it
should not be taken as a bad omen or sign, though the prophets are
awesome, took good omens because they're positive, but anything
negative he avoided. And that was prohibited, that there is no such
thing. They used to use divining arrows. In those days, they had
different map arrows that were marked differently in their tails.
And then if they had to make a decision, they would pick one out.
And if it showed a certain color, then they would take that
seriously as a bad omen and don't go.
Don't Don't go on this journey. For example, Don't make this
decision. The province of Assam said all of this is called Islam,
all of this is wrong.
So from the shaytaan. So while all of that was all of that became
something under scrutiny and looked viewed as suspicious,
suspicious, the problem is that religious faith, religious beliefs
also
became diluted, if not completely washed out in that regard as well.
Natural disasters, for example, such as earthquakes, tsunamis,
etc.
They then tended to be explained scientifically, rather than as an
act of God.
Now, what do you see as a problem with that? Well,
is he any miracle that happens, somebody may give a scientific
explanation, for example, you know, the, in a time of Musa
alayhis salam, when the community was afflicted, by knits,
locusts, blood everywhere, and the various different kinds of plagues
that overcame them, that scientists have looked at looked
at that and they've decided why this has happened. It was because
of this particular reason they've tried to explain it
scientifically. Now, for us, the purpose of that was a punishment
admonition, that that's what we look at, that doesn't have to be
divorced from science, the fact that somebody can give an
explanation of how these things happen. That's not a problem as
such, we're not going to go with the explanation, because that
explanation could change tomorrow, in the light of new research,
subhanAllah look at this, how many of you believe that cholesterol is
bad for you?
Right, how many of you don't believe that cholesterol is bad
for us? Let me ask you that question. Right. Cholesterol for
the last 20 3040 years, as far back as we can remember, has been
a bad thing that the bad cholesterol, which comes a lot
from over eating dairy products, butter, and so on. So just
yesterday, in The Telegraph, there is an article that says that this
has been the biggest lie of the century.
And it's not, there is no such thing as bad cholesterol. I mean,
I haven't looked at it so deeply yet. But this is what it's saying
is that it's not as bad as we made it out to be. Because there's
people who get these clogged arteries and so on. They have
completely sometimes healthy cholesterol level levels as such.
So that's just a simple example. Right? That's just a simple
example. But science can change each day. I mean, how many times
in my life have they said, margarine is better than butter?
And then they've turned around said no butter is actually better.
And Marjorie, and now probably butter is winning because of this
whole cholesterol revision. Right? So what I'm trying to say here is
that we can never fully
always depend on scientific theories, you have to remember
that, but we're not averse to them, either. It's only when they
challenge religion, that we have an issue with that. So I don't see
a problem with something being an act of God, and there being a
scientific explanation behind it. Why do you have to say No, this
cannot be assigned. This is an act of God and thus the community
science behind it. SubhanAllah. Right. Why does it have to be like
that? There can be explanations of things. Allah could really this is
a world that works in a certain way. Allah could just change the
functions, the reactions, the quantum connections between
things, and it worked in a different way. And then people
have understood that there was an exceptional case of something.
Well, what's the big deal about that?
So Rob,
very different from Christianity. Islam has ever had a problem with
it. In fact, we had some great scientists and this is not the
time to go into that discussion. Number two, there's a widely
is a widely held faith in scientifically based progress. As
I said, Islam has no problem with science. So that part of modernity
was not too much of a problem, except when people felt that you
could not marry the two together. But as I said, the religion must
dominate all the time, the religion must dominate, even if he
can't understand the reasoning behind something. The reason is
that science could be changing. It's a matter of perspective. And
today, it's also a matter of lobbying to a certain degree of
what really matters in terms of health, food industries, and
things of that nature. Things are very complex.
Okay, now let's just move on to the key features of the post
modern society. And you'll see more of a contrast, the difference
between the last 3040 years and many centuries before that big
difference, the way I generally see that explained the difference
between the two is that if you look in 1950 1951, or so National
Geographic, did a number of good photographs, it did a photo
edition of the hedge. And it's quite an impressive, beautiful
pictures. And in there, the shaytaan is about this big, right?
Or maybe a bit taller, right? It's literally a round circle round
circular wall, and it's got a small stump coming out of it. And
that was shaytaan. And there was a big Coca Cola sign behind it, they
both have to exist together for some reason, right? Though today,
you don't see the Coca Cola anymore. But that was it, then it
became bigger,
it became bigger.
And now in the last 10 years, look how big it's become.
Compared to that size, it's the size of this room really
SubhanAllah. Look how big shaitan has become the Jama writes to be
more accurate. But you know, that small stump that was there in
1950s, that is probably what it was, for the last several
centuries before that, not a change. And in the last 50 years,
it's changed twice, it became bigger, put a few floors on it.
And then Subhan Allah had to be made a wider
law hook.
That is the change that we are looking at just that is very
symbolic of the change of the world.
So the key features of the postmodern society and you can
trace this, anybody who's 40 years or more 3540 years or more, they
can trace this number one the media.
This is the media has never been the way it is now, in this period,
postmodern period of such huge expansion in media technology,
digital media, especially the internet.
It's led to massive and unprecedented increase in a number
of people using media
becoming grossed.
addicted, huge increase in the diversity of media products. And
with that comes both factual and fictional. This is the problem.
Before if you wanted to entertain, be entertained, there was a circus
you could go to. Right? There were as a clown that you could get
somewhere or the other. And today, you can literally sit in your home
and be entertained to death. Literally.
There are increased numbers of people, everybody can now become
an artist. Because you just do it you have the recording, you can
have a the most high tech recording equipment in your own
homes. It's easy to purchase. Now. You can make a studio, you can
have editing software, all of this stuff, which had to be done
professionally now is done in your own home. And thus we have more
machines as well. But we have so many other things as well. So
there's always the good and bad in all of this music video profile
sites.
letting the public know who you are what you are revealing
everything about yourself.
One consequence of this is that our society has now become
increasingly reliant if not completely dependent on media to
tell us what is going on around in the world.
Some sociologists argue that media creates
something called hyper reality.
hyper reality, something way above reality, an augmented something
with a catalyst that gives you something greater than it is And
subhanAllah that is what it is. I have seen places which then I have
seen in haich D
you know with everything around it and you know you know these, these
curved screens and these are not special these latest displays you
look at them and you think I don't even think that kind of color,
that vivid color, you know exist in real life.
In
essence, this is like better than real life. It's hyper, it's hyper
reality, that stuff doesn't even exist in real life. You don't see
it that way.
So where we see in the media, a different
something that seems more real than reality.
We're living in some post world and in the sense of everything is
posted post truth world.
Just to give you an example,
when the tortoise swept through, when the Tatas swept through the
Central Asia, major cities, if you look at the depiction of the
historians, like YBNL, Athena and others, the way they would explain
is, these were events that no pen has ever written, no AI has ever
witnessed. No mother has ever had the need to see my fingers shake
and quiver to write about these horrendous issues. The terror that
gripped up people's hearts, it was all done in words, there is no
picture book of anything from those ages.
Today, it's all in pitches. And while it's a good thing in the
sense that it creates something in us, and it motivates us, it
evokes our emotions. But the problem is that when you've seen
too much of it, then it has to be more gory, more gruesome,
and more terrifying for it to then infect you again.
I mean, movies are like that today. Movies are the
hyperreality. As such, when you've seen that, then what does Aleppo
make different? How does that be different?
Now, it's all in pitches. We don't rely on words anymore. And we're
trying to create emotions through that. So while there's a benefit,
one has to understand that there is a detriment to all of these
things. Why am I saying this, I'm not saying that we need to go and
abort all of these things. And to
abandon these things and everything. It's just for us to
understand the reality, do not consider everything that you see
to be a reality, we're living in a hyper real world. This is the
problem.
Another one is new networks. Now think about this.
In this postmodern world, we're dealing with absolutely new
networks that you would never have been able to create for yourself.
Had it been about 50 years ago. This means
generally profile sites like Facebook and others.
You have created a whole network of virtual relatives, virtual
friends, virtual connections, and in many of these cases, to the
detriment of your real connections, to the detriment of
the real people who are with you, you will discard them, as many of
us do, because we're in our phone, even in a meeting, you go to a
wedding nowadays, and everybody around the table has to check
their emails, has to check their profiles, they will in fact, get
emails WhatsApp, it's the biggest fitna, it's the biggest challenge.
Right. And you have to apologize Sorry, sorry, sorry, you know, if
somebody kind of looks at you,
but this is what it is.
This is cause one of the consequences of this is that it's
obviously created the breakdown of local communities.
Locally, you don't help each other as much because of being too busy
with this. As people increasingly work network online, not work
online network online, in the privacy of their own homes.
They don't communicate with their next door neighbors. One simple
example of this was that I remember I was in a post office
once this was actually when I was in America, in a post office. And
I was waiting in line and there was a line to get passport
processing.
You know, you can do it fast track in the post office. So same thing
down there. And I knew the attendant in the post of is the
one who used to work there. I knew it was I've met him many times.
Now he's helping the next customer. So he's helping you fill
out the form or whatever checking it out. And he says, Hey, you're
my neighbor. You live next door to me.
He only found out that she lives next door to him because of the
address. The door numbers are next door to each other otherwise he
doesn't know. This is the first time they have to meet in a post
office by chance Subhanallah
The next point is fashion and music. These things have become so
fluid and so changeable today, as they've never been two of the most
visible examples of the fast change
What we see today lies in the music and fashion industries. Now,
what do I mean by that it's always been music around. But today
because of the vast consumption and how you can put your music or
your machine in a sheet with music, and unfortunately, there's
a lot of people out there who start in a sheet very kosher, very
nice, very halal. And then suddenly they think, what's the
point? And you know, it's not about what's the point I spoke to
somebody recently. And he said, I could make all of the sounds of
music with my own mouth, you know, what they call?
What do you call that? Beat? Beat boxing, right? Personally, my
opinion. And I haven't looked into this properly yet, and I'm
intending to, but my opinion is anything that sounds like New
Zealand crazy, same problem is like music. That's my opinion.
Alright, so I don't think new beatboxing that makes you get up
and do haram things and makes you jump around like an idiot, right?
That is any more permissible than instrumental music. Because at the
end of the day, it's the sound which is a problem, not
necessarily just the
you know, the doofus allowed because that was for, you know,
either for Jihad purposes, announcement purposes, there was a
purpose for that. But anything that is going to
pull at your heartstrings and give you a false sense of excitement,
then there has to be a very good reason why you use that.
So anyway, there's, you can see this online, this you can see this
online, you know, there's people criticizing each other, trying to
get ahead of each other with all of these things. So
people on media like that, in the fashion industry and the music
industry, they have to constantly evolve with new styles.
I've never watched this myself yet, but for the last year or two,
there's something out of Korea that I kept reading about in the
news, you can't avoid a gang gang gang was a goal
Gangam Style, right? Some special kind of dance or something? Right?
So these are just all new fads, they come in, and then they will
go. So essentially, what the socialists are saying is that, at
the extreme end of this, you're going to have pop idols, nasheed
artists, or whoever you you know, or even speakers, for that matter,
you know, speakers,
giving Islamic talks, unfortunately, who they they have
to be made, they will be made a star one month, and then it will
be pushed down another month. Because it's all fan based. How
can you trust fans, it's not about guidance. It's about doing crazy
things, sometimes
wearing certain types of garments and color, like you know, like
hoodies.
Another one, which I'm sure we can relate to, every one of us can
relate to, we may not be able to relate to the music and
everything, everyone, every one of us or the fashion. But this one,
the consumer society, there's been a complete change. We think of
this as normal, that you can just go and buy what you want. And get
it as you like, next day delivery, same day delivery, you know,
forget next day delivery and Amazon Prime. That's old fashioned
now, just about if you haven't caught up, you're you know, you're
really behind. It's same day delivery, yes, you pay a price for
it. But the pricing structure of all of this is become being
tolerant, a tolerable is becoming acceptable, because you just want
it your desire.
You no longer do you have to think should I buy this? Should I not
buy this, it's just buy it, because they've made it easy for
you to return. Most people don't return. They don't bother with the
hassle of returning. So let's buy it. We're just returning when we
have to.
That's why you can go into Costco with a massive cart bigger than
other supermarkets, right? And you can put in toasters, you can put
in refrigerators, right? And just buy them and then say, okay, if I
don't like it, if it doesn't work, well, I'll give it back. But most
people don't end up giving it back. And then worst of all for
Muslims, you buy it on credit card,
you buy it on credit. And then a lot of people end up paying
interest on these things. And that just takes out the baraka and the
blessing. And the pleasure out of all of this. Imagine you have a
sofa that you purchased, and you're paying for it over two
years. You've never really feel like it's yours because you owe
money. Especially if you're struggling. You never feel like
it's yours. You don't have the satisfaction of the hearts, and
you got your TV like that as well. Your car is like that. Can you
imagine? You're living on borrowed money basically. And then once
you've paid it off, and it becomes yours and you're supposed to be
satisfied. It's old, it's worn out. It's finished now, as opposed
to that if you bought a
lot
A great sofa, something within your budget, a nice secondhand gum
tree shoes. Pushpak was it was the new one
or the eBay, right? You can find some good deals on there, you know
if you if you're careful if you're if you're looking for these
things, for example, IKEA stuff, you wonder sometimes why it's even
bother going to IKEA to buy, you get so much IKEA stuff that is
virtually new. Because all of these guys are buying it, you
know, students and then after six months a year they're sending it
off. It's quite crazy. And you get it for half the price for those
who are savvy buyers like that. But
what are these things?
If you could save up and buy what you want, you get much more
pleasure because you've paid it off. It's your psychologically,
you get the pleasure of that
consumer society, the individual freedom of one's own lifestyle.
One fundamental difference between the postmodern and modern
societies is that our society is completely now consumer oriented.
It's all about consumption, consumption, consumption, consume,
consume, consume.
Think about it. That's all it is.
leisure activities are now more important today than work.
Tell me? Did you even have a single dessert place in London?
20 years ago,
there was not a sick, I mean, restaurants, there were a few 100
restaurants, right?
They ran out of options. They had to have fusion restaurants.
Because just Chinese didn't work. Just Indian didn't work. South
Indian, you know, you have people, you know, how does the restaurant
even work anymore? Because people are so tired of everything. So now
it's deserts, and not one desert place that everywhere. You go to
Saudi, every second shop, every second store is a perfume store.
I've seen in the last three years, from the few perfume stores you
had, you know, the, the HTML and you had the Quraishi. And you had
a few others, right? rasasi, whatever. And now, every second
job, new name SubhanAllah. It's all over the place. What does that
tell you? Perfume is a good thing and promise Awesome. That's one
indulgence. He liked good perfume.
But this is just the culture of that. That's why one of the
biggest, you know, one of the biggest new markets in perfume in
you know, the Cologne, the Western perfumes is such, so food
oriented. Where did that come in from? It's from these wealthy Arab
buyers, the Middle East Gulf buyers, every company is producing
this because just about consumption, consumption,
consumption,
consumption and leisure activities. Even the Muslims like
this are today we have to take holidays. And again, there's
nothing wrong with taking holidays. But the image of the
post modern society, if you look at it, if you look at this,
honestly, is that it's one of the shopping mall, rather than the
factory. People want to entertain themselves more than they want to
work.
And that's why the people with money, they just they have to we
have to have these new immigrants and new people to come in to do
the job because the locals don't want to work. They want to sit at
a desk and get unhealthy unfortunately,
this is all part of the new consumer society. Now, looking at
this slightly from a different perspective and look and asking a
few questions. Firstly, let's look at secularism. Now.
Secularism generally the idea of secularism is that no religion,
separation of church and state, the country is a secular country,
which means that it doesn't have a religious ethos, or religious rule
as such, right.
Let's ask a few questions.
This is now going into epistemology our source of
information, who decides what's good or bad for us?
Who decides what is good or bad for us? What is moral or immoral?
What is accepted or acceptable or unacceptable? So let me ask a very
simple question. Why is it more wrong to cover your head than to
cover any other part of the body?
What is wrong? Why is it more wrong to cover your head? For a
woman let's say with a hijab
than to cover any other parts of the body.
Many women most women out there feel obliged to cover certain
parts of their body at least while they will reveal other parts.
Why is that acceptable? And why is it more wrong to for a woman to
feel that she must also cover her hair? Who makes that decision?
Think about it really on a very basic level.
On a very low level, who makes that decision for you? Who
basically influences your perspective? What is the line
beyond which it becomes morally wrong to cover up to here, this
much covering is moral. And then beyond that, hey, that's immoral.
That's wrong. That's crazy. That's freaky.
Who makes that moral decision?
Why isn't covering your head? Having no hijab, and wearing
jeans? Why is that any better than wearing
a G labia Juba full covering a large tunic and robe and a hijab
on your head?
Why is that any better ways wearing jeans and showing your
hair more better than covering it up?
What is the scientific reasoning behind that? Come on, if you're
living in a time of science, what is the scientific reasoning? What
is this? Who's making that decision for you? Basically, it's
all based on custom and current social trend.
It's what is
analyze, rather analysis was commented upon. It's what the
Stores show you. It's what is depicted online. And then you just
have to have a few politicians and other Islamophobes and far right
people and others, liberals and progressives that just criticize
some of these things. And then suddenly, you feel like should I
be doing that or not?
Every community thinks that their custom is the most rational way or
the absolute rule.
Right? Every society thinks that their custom, their custom is the
most rational way, or the absolute rule.
So when they see somebody covering up more than is generally covered
up, then they think that is strange.
That is strange.
That's why a Greek poet said, custom is king of all, custom is
king of all, it's what the customer is, you will have to
conform to that. If you're weak, you will conform, you will not
challenge.
And then you will be demoralized insights. Because your so called
religion will be telling you one thing,
you have an affinity and affiliation towards that. But your
customer is telling you something else. This is the dilemma that
we're dealing with today.
Muslims should really ask themselves, what is truth for you?
What is truth? Who defines truth for you? What is the HAC? What is
the truth? What is the ultimate source of this truth for you?
Is that the culture and civilization that you live in?
Which is going to be constantly in flux and changing as I will come
to that?
This is a very important question that will define your perspective.
Honestly, ask yourself, what is it that matters for me who defines
truth for me.
And this will tell you who you are.
In this country, and in any Western country.
For Muslims to survive, you're gonna have to start questioning
things.
You're gonna have to start questioning things,
to be able to contribute to the social paradigm.
There are 1 million Muslims in London, which is about one eight
of the population. And if you go to Oxford Street, it's one in
every three people is a Muslim, everybody from the person who
serves you in boots on Oxford Street, personal experience, to
the shoppers in Selfridges, and
John Lewis and Harrods and the rest of it.
That's not a problem, by the way to have too many Muslims there.
That's a nice thing. It runs the economy.
Questioning so you see, one is an idea and one is an ideology. When
things become an ideology, you don't think about that ideology
when you make a decision.
If secularism and liberalism becomes your ideology, then you
will just do things. And if you look at it from a normal person
who lives in England, or in America, he looks at a Muslim
dressed differently on a Friday prayer, for example, or a woman
who comes into work with a hedgehog on he's gonna think why,
why do you need to do this?
Nobody else does it. Why do you have to do this? And
unfortunately, the media is not on our side and neither are we doing
anything to help to try to change that idea to explain why we do
things differently. What is the reasoning behind this?
Questioning such deep rooted and blind assumptions may sound
ridiculous to many and absolutely absurd, but you say to them, that
They tell you like why do you dress? What do you think is the
problem with that?
Why do you think me dress like this is any different than you? Is
it just because everybody else doesn't do it? Like, why? Where
does your ultimate source of truth come from? Can you imagine if you
challenge somebody like that? You never do that. Say, oh, yeah, you
know, it's my religion. And other question back. Why do you say
that? What's your problem?
Who defines the truth? Who defines what's more moral? challenge it,
don't be on the defensive beyond the offensive and ask the
question, because at the end of the day, for us to survive, here,
we're going to have to be part of this discourse.
Otherwise, you're just going to be bashed on the head with a stick to
say you must conform.
Essentially, that's what happens all the time.
If such countries are, too, because what you have to
understand is that Europe has a huge immigration, jet. Germany has
just taken a million refugees in. And for that, even France is going
to have to change there are so many analysts, political
theorists,
who scientists are already saying about France, that they're laser
to the extreme form of liberalism, which is so extreme that it
doesn't allow any kind of symbolism of the faith, or any
kind of salient display of faith. It doesn't allow it, yet it allows
criticism of the faith, if they want to allow criticism of the
faith, and when people get used to that, then why don't they all I
mean, I'm just as an just as a, you know, just from a secular
perspective, why don't they also allow displays of religion, let
people feel comfortable. But no, the lies that is too strong, it's
become a religion on its own, it's become militant to a certain
degree.
Thus, you have them putting he jobs off, you know, not he jobs
off, actually gowns off women on the beach.
That's extreme.
It's a, it's a, it's an ideology, it's become an ideology.
And they think that they have to, this is gonna die out, if they
don't act against religion, but Europe is going to have to really
think about this, that in order these millions of people who have
another religion, see Catholics, it doesn't make much of a
difference, they have a few issues, which are not very
manifest issues, they're more about like contraception and
abortion and things of that nature. Right. It's Muslims that
bear the brunt of most of this, because we have a very kind of
overt religious identity.
That's why Europe is going to have to really think about this the
Western world in general, they're gonna have to really think about
how do we foster a tolerant society that's really tolerant,
and make the Muslims feel at home. Thus, they feel British or French,
or American, or whatever the case is, right? And thus can be better
contributors, and we have less problems.
This is something that's missing the far right generally clouds the
issue here for the moderates out there. And we don't help.
If such countries want to be successful, and prosperous,
they'll have to accept this kind of debate and argument. And we
have to bring the argument out there in a nice, in a nice way.
This is what's most important.
Let's just look at modernity. modernity, in its absolute free
for all idea has an immense amount of fluidity. It can adapt and
change day, morning to evening, it can change. Everything is in flux.
There are no principles, there are no soul. There are no fixed
foundations and fundamentals, everything is allowed. As long as
it doesn't harm somebody else. That is the only restriction you
have, as long as you are not harming somebody else. Everything
is allowed.
For example, the things that we are used to today in our society,
and I have been forced to agree with certain wrongs that we've
been forced to agree with.
Do you know that in 50 to 100 years, they're going to be
different
things are moving, they're going to be different.
The current orthodoxies current things which are considered to be
orthodox conservative, they will become unthinkable and outrageous
heresies, possibly in the next 50 to 100 years.
You can look back in the last 40 years and think what has changed,
and then just project that because it's only getting faster to train
is just going faster and faster and faster. And just see what kind
of challenges lies ahead.
Now you can have three parent babies and
Britain is at the forefront of that.
To have a baby from three parents. Do you know what you do? It's done
in a, in a laboratory.
It's done in a laboratory
Hamdulillah.
This is this is why I mean, in all honesty, according to a Sheikh
Abdul Hakim Murad, he mentioned that
we,
it's very difficult for us to engage at a very deep level,
a conversation at a very, very deep level
other than just doing firefighting
because when you're dealing with a modernity has no fixed principles,
except, you know, safety and rights and all of these things.
Otherwise, you can do anything in that regard. If you look at the
media, you look at songs, you look artists,
would you call it art? I mean, artists using elephant dung in
their art. I mean, there's no boundaries at all in what you want
to do. And it goes beyond that. Right?
So for us to have a conversation, we coming from a very SULI
perspective in Islam, there are many fixed ideas, you can't do
this, you can't do that. This is a fundamental of our religion. This
is a fundamental religion. How can you have a discourse with somebody
that doesn't have any fundamentals? Well, we don't agree
with that. You don't agree with that we don't have any
fundamental, just basic fundamentals of rights and so on.
That's why we're generally going to be firefighting.
They don't seem to be any soul. It's just everything is endlessly
mobile.
Even gender is fluid today.
Even gender is fluid today. And that's why it's become so easy for
the male to try out being a female.
Right? You just stop. When you don't like it anymore. You just
stop taking the, you know, the steroids or whatever they take.
At the end of the day, nobody really becomes the agenda. They
just have to continually take the medication to keep them like that.
If they stop, then everything kind of fizzles out. So it's never
100%. Yeah, there's some surgery that takes place that aspect, but
in general, the hormones and everything, it's all based on a
continuous
in a continuous administration of that.
Right, the idea of liberalism was supposed to be tolerance, after
Europe had had a bad experience with the church. Because the
France, if you look at France, was a Christian country, ruled by the
church. That's what it was, until, you know, just some, some, you
know, less than a century ago, probably,
suddenly,
it's shut off that.
And the whole idea of liberalism is supposed to be that anything
should go we should be completely tolerant. It's supposed to be a
doctrine of tolerance, let people do what they want.
However, today, it seems that the same liberalism, in many places,
is unwilling to tolerate anything other than its own self.
And I'll tell you some of these things, in fact, in some ways, is
become very coercive, very forceful.
You must have such and such a curriculum.
You must have such and such a curriculum, you must hold certain
these particular views about alternative sexualities.
about gender,
there's a number increasing number of boxes that you have to tick, to
say that you are British, though nobody really knows what it means
to be British.
So the whole point of liberalism was to open the horizons for
people to think and believe as they wanted.
But
unfortunately, it's going against that as well, just purely from a
liberal perspective.
Today, it's becoming there's a liberal Inquisition in schools,
through prevent, and other things which have gone very wrong, though
it started off as a great idea for a good reason to keep people
secure. But unfortunately, so many experts are saying that it's very
toxic its problem.
There's an inquisition taking place in schools that you must be
liberal. I mean, hamdulillah is still better for us here than it
is in France. But otherwise, you see that they're stopping people
from
the stopping madrasahs from taking foreign students for example,
somebody says they've revoked their licenses. Are they causing a
lot of issues to certain mothers? While somebody says definitely
need to, you know, put the standards up? No doubt I can
understand that. But
otherwise just harshly coming down asking young children about things
that, you know, they've never been, never had to deal with
before, you know, questions? Where is it all this coming from? Is
this supposed to be liberalism? Or is this forcing somebody to
believe in a certain way, a certain ideology?
It seems like the xenophobia in Europe where you have this rise of
the far right,
right, like in France, and in other countries where the far
right, anti immigration people are coming up, it seems like one of
the causes for that is, you know, the traditional family values that
we enjoyed, have all been deteriorated because of all of
these postmodern ideas that we just spoke about.
People feeling nostalgic, people feeling where can we get this
back, they then see these foreigners, these immigrants who
look different, and say, These guys are spoiling our country.
Whereas he's got nothing to do with us. It's got nothing to do
with immigrants.
Just a few other points to to wrap up.
For the European Muslim, or the American Muslim, the Western
Muslim, right, if we talk about because we all sharing the same
kind of thing, just in different intensities and proportion,
different challenges slightly, someone who was brought up in a
one of these countries in which we find ourselves in mashallah,
right. And, you know, I'm proud to be a British Muslim, I have no
problem with that. Right. And I don't think that should be an
issue. Allah has brought us here for a reason. And we should be
proud of that. This is our country, and mashallah you feel at
home here. Right? One of the challenges though, for anybody
who's born in this country, for example, if they take this
country, is that you're going to have no doubt, you're going to
have a European cognitive framework,
the way you see things is going to be very European, even if you are
a practicing Muslim, and there's nothing wrong with that, to a
certain level, you know, there's nothing wrong with that to look at
things, you know, there's, we enjoy a lot of freedom, we enjoy a
lot of fairness, we enjoy that our work can be done without us having
to pay a bribe, or to have a Washita, or a connection, or
having to go and get 10 signatures before anything goes. And it's
crazy in some of these countries, is one country that I studied in.
And if you stay more than a certain number of weeks or
whatever, you have to get a visa to come out, which takes nearly
half a day to process what they call a huge an exit visa. And you
don't get that at the airport, you have to go into the local office.
And then you have to go there and some fill in a form and pay some
money and buy a ticket and all the rest of it. And then after that,
this guy, one guy will sign it, then you go to another guy and he
doesn't even look it just he signs it. And then another guy has to
sign it. And if any of these signatures are missing, then
you're in trouble. This is so much bureaucracy hamdulillah Allah's
makes made it so much easy for us. It's so, so easy. So we were used
to this framework. So we have a European Framework.
Things are easier, right? Because the only thing that people who are
born here have to deal with is the Islamic paradigm. Right? And the
European paradigm, just two paradigms, you have to try to
bring them together, though, let's just say the Western paradigm in
the same paradigm. It's easier. But you know what, you know who
it's more difficult for those who are not born in this country? Who
were who started off in another country, especially India, Egypt,
Pakistan, Bangladesh, Syria, Sudan, you know,
Somalia, wherever else it is, right? Afghanistan, right? If I'm
missing anybody, let me know. Right? Nigeria, Ghana, whatever it
is, right? Wherever people are from. And then you come here, now
you've got Indian Nigerian
cognitive framework, British,
Western, you have to deal with that. And Islamic? How do you
throw all of those three together and deal with it? It's a lot more.
That's why you see that. There's a massive difference between the
first generation and the second generation.
So much difference not just the way they speak, but just the way
they view things.
Because of the framework, there's still a lot of village in people.
Right? Even if they've moved to London.
If they've come from the village for that matter,
what do we do in this case? How do we deal with this?
This is a culture of me, me, I consumerism, greed,
immediate gratification, instant gratification.
Absorption of indulgence in whatever possibilities of pleasure
there may be out there. That which was open just to the higher
ranking people. That was that which was just accessible.
To the royalty of the past centuries, is accessible to us
today. What we need to come back to at the end of the day is that
we have an era to go to.
So with all of these, the so called ease, and this framework
we're in, what we have to remember is that there's a God we have to
stand in front of everything, the whole smart system of ALLAH
SubhanA, WA, tada has been put into place, we are all chipped by
a chip of Allah subhanahu wa taala that records everything that we
do. We are smart bodies, even before this word was created in
the Western world, that our heart is chipped with a particular chip
that we can't even see that technology doesn't even exist in
this world. Well, who Scylla mouth is so dual, that which is in the
heart will be disclosed. Yoma even to head the throat Akbar the
ground, the earth beneath our feet is so well chipped that everything
we do is tracked just like Google Fit tracks where you go. Right and
Google Photo will tell you exactly where you've been even if you
don't know where you've been right by the photos you take. Right?
Because this happened recently I was in Jordan. We went and saw
this palace this this actually this fort, took some pictures and
Google Photos is telling me this is so and so forth. I was like
okay, I forgot the name. Right? The ground is chipped around the
day Allah subhanaw taala Yama is into Hadith Ba ba ba and Rebecca
ohada. In fact, every limb of ours is chipped with senses, such as
Allah subhanaw taala says again in the Quran that people will say to
their limbs, that what is wrong with you, they will say undock and
Allah, Allah the undock of Kula che.
Our Lord, Your Lord has caused us to speak. Allah has caused us to
speak, who caused everything to speak on this system. And today,
we can understand that from the smart home where the fridge, the
lights, everything is connected the doorbell, you could be in
another country and see who's at your door, you know, because
there's a special doorbells you can get right? This is all the
modern world we're living in. But it tells us how everything Allah
can watch in Rob Baca, LaBelle, Mirasol, God, your Lord is in
close watch. Mirza, there's somebody who's watching very
closely, not just looking at 10 screens at once. Allah sees
everything at once, individually. And that's the Lord we have to
stand in front of, we have to avoid the greed, we have to avoid
the indulgence, because it is only harmful and it is detrimental.
Whether that be the food consumption, whatever it may be,
we enjoy the world because we have to live in it. This is our way of
getting getting to the hereafter. But at the end of the day, we do
have a reality there is a reality that we're going to have to stand
up to, which is Allah subhanaw taala that's why all of these
things have just been mentioned to open up our eyes, that it is not
what it all seems there's a understanding that we have to have
as how to approach these things. May Allah subhanaw taala give us
the ability to understand these things give us divine insights,
firaga rasa, fear rasa because a believer needs that divine
intuition to see what's right and wrong. May Allah assist us and do
not allow us to be overcome by our souls. Let the Qin Illa and fusina
authoritarian even for the blink of an eye, and Allahu Allahu Allah
Allah him now rooster na wala guy,
inspire us with our guidance, which path I should take for
myself and for my children for my community. These are the two hours
that we need to make and above all, Rabbana Allah to the Kulu
banaba it Hadith and I will humble and I will let them come Kurama in
the cantle Wahab Oh Allah Oh my Lord, do not call our Lord do not
cause our hearts to deviate after you have given them guidance.
Don't allow them to become crooked.
Numerous do as of the Allahumma inni are also becoming a Schottky
Phil huckberry Eliakim Allah Allah I seek your refuge from doubt
with regards the truth, after having had conviction
Allahumma inni are all the becoming ill how the battle code
of Allah I seek your refuge from turning from a good state into an
evil state from being changed into a different transformed into a
different state. May Allah subhanaw taala make us closer to
him and may Allah make the best of our days the day that we stand in
front of him and may Allah allow us to understand and to benefit
ourselves benefit others in this world working with our Anna Anil
hamdulillahi rabbil aalameen
We'll make a short DUA and then
alojamento Salaam salaam demonic the other jewelry with the Quran
Allah homie are you you're a young medical history Allahumma your
hand no no yeah
and either in Sub Saharan Africa in couldn't mean authority mean
Allahumma salli wa salam ala Sayidina Muhammad Juana earlier so
you then I'm humbly Moberly co Salam, O Allah we ask You for Your
Divine Mercy of Allah we ask You for Your compassion of Allah we
ask You for Your forgiveness of Allah we ask you to make our
hearts the way you want them to be, Oh Allah we want you to make
our actions. Those that please you of Allah, we ask You for
protection from evil actions, or Allah many, many things that
become part and parcel of our life that are of disobedience to you.
Oh Allah, we have come to a point where we sometimes don't even know
what rooms we are doing, that we may be doing so much wrong. Oh
Allah, we ask you for understanding. We asked you for
guidance. We ask you to make us force for good in this world of
Allah to grant us
the light in our hearts and the light in front of us and around
us. Oh Allah, we ask you to assist us and help us and protect us and
our children from all of the challenges that are out there. Oh
Allah we asked you to protect us and keep us steadfast of Allah
keep us steadfast in our faith of Allah we ask you to bless our
teachers of Allah to bless our students of Allah to bless our
families. And our Allah we ask you, that you send your abundant
blessings in our messenger Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa
salam, O Allah this year has ended. Another year has come
about, we mentioned the year because this is the frame of
reference that we use, Oh Allah, every day really is the same for
us, regardless of whether it'd be January or February. These are
just dates. Oh Allah, our death could be written on any of these
days. And Oh Allah, the main thing for us is that you will take us
from this world in a way that we are satisfied with you and you are
satisfied with us of Allah make our endings a good ending of Allah
make our ending a good ending. Grant us a beautiful ceiling state
of Allah grant us a beautiful ceiling state, allow us to repent,
allow us to repent and return to you and be free of all sins before
we depart this world. Oh Allah. Bless all of those who have
established this masjid and who have these programs here and who
work hard to keep the masjid Oh Allah in the way it is. And Allah
grant him great success in all of their endeavors and their
ambitions and goals. And oh Allah also protect all of the other
massage as well. And our Allah we asked you to fulfill and help and
assist us with our permissible goals of Allah and our permissible
needs and remove our sicknesses and illnesses of both the exterior
and the interior illnesses. Oh Allah, we ask you for your
assistance of Allah we ask you for your assistance of Allah we ask
You for Your baraka and blessing Subhan Allah because Allah is that
your Emilio Sifu and our Salah when Allah Marcelino Al
Hamdulillah Europe