Abdur Rahman ibn Yusuf Mangera – Dealing Islamophobia
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Bismillah al Rahman al Rahim Al hamdu Lillahi wa Salatu was Salam
ala Sayyidina Muhammad wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa Baraka was
seldom at the Sleeman kefir on Eli o Medina, Amma beret.
My apologies first because I can't see any of you. This light is too
much I can't see yours. Unfortunately, I'll have to just
imagine that you're all sitting there.
The first thing I want to mention is that this is my you can see my
first
my first visit to Holland, the Netherlands, the land of the
Dutch, whatever you want to call it. And initially, for the last
several years, the idea that I can't I can only speak for myself
and maybe a few others.
The idea we had of this country,
oh, Marshall, I can actually start seeing some of you now.
The idea we had of this country was a representation of this creek
wilderness. He defines who Netherlands is for the people
outside. So we've thought it's a really racist place and I really
felt sorry for the Muslims. All of your brothers and sisters that are
here. I felt really sorry for you all this time, and traveled to
many other countries but never to this country. However, mashallah,
it's been a pleasant surprise. After coming here, flying into
Amsterdam, doing a little tour of Amsterdam. By the way, the tour of
Amsterdam meant the big masajid not anything else. And
I was completely and utterly surprised by the size of the
masjid that you have. For example, the ISO film was the brand new
most that's recently built. You know, when around Europe, I've
traveled a number of countries both around Europe, I've lived in
America and other places and the sheer size and the prominence the
imposing nature of your masajid it's really something that you
must be thankful about. Because this is a really important symbol.
I'll give you an idea Switzerland, a place like Sweden, which is
supposed to be where Geneva where the UN is, it's supposed to be
such an international kind of city. I know you have the the den
hug or whatever you call it to the Hague. But still Geneva is, you
know, one of the more prominent cities in that regard. Still, they
have an issue with minarets. It's just too much of a symbol of
Islam.
Moscow, I have some friends in Moscow, there's about 2 million
Muslims apparently in Moscow, but only about three or four messages.
Apparently. You go to France, which has so many Muslims and they
have to pray in basements and and you know, that they're Subhanallah
I was really pleasantly surprised. You know, even after coming to
Rotterdam and seeing the big minarets, you know, the Ottoman
minarets in Europe that was quite surprising for me. So we after
speaking to a number of brothers, it does seem that mashallah you do
have a lot of rights here as Muslims and Muslims are
comfortable Muslims mashallah are allowed to practice their faith.
Look, we have challenges, we have challenges everywhere, England,
this is that's where I'm from. We have challenges there. I've lived
in Muslim countries, we have challenges there in Muslim
countries. I don't think there's a single country in the world where
people don't have challenges. Challenges is the nature of this
world, this dunya as long as we're in this dunya, there's going to be
challenges. Hopefully in the hereafter. If it's genital fear
those, that's when it will be a life without challenges. The way
to deal with this world is to try to deal with the challenges in a
successful way. So that in sha Allah, no challenges continue, all
our challenges are done in this world, we're free of challenges.
Then in sha Allah, we get accepted Salah when either you come in
genital fear those insha Allah by the angels.
Now, one of the I want to speak about a number of different things
in a very short time that I have.
So the first thing I want to speak about is the challenge of living
in a western paradigm, not just the Western paradigm, but a time
of great liberalism, which becomes the dominating ideology. If you
look around you,
you have many ideas around you, and ideas can be discussed openly,
nobody should have a problem with ideas being discussed. For
example.
An idea is the idea of justice,
idea of macro economics, economics, marriage, gender
rights, these are generally considered ideas and people can
talk about them, play about with them, disagree with aspects about
them. These things are absolutely possible. However, you then have
another nother thing which is called an ideology, an ideology.
an ideology is something very different. When you challenge
somebody
ideology that is not as easy as challenging an idea, a generic
idea, I want you to stay with me, I'm going to try to make it as
simple as possible Inshallah, because this is something that I,
you know, I'm interested in ideology is different, what is
ideology? ideology is about the background of your brain, the way
you see the world, the way the lens by which you see the world,
even without realizing how you see the world.
It is very inherent within us, it's very essential. It's so close
to us that we can't even see it. We don't even realize many
aspects. It's very deep rooted. That's an ideology. The only time
that you become aware of your ideology is generally when you're
made aware of your ideology. For example, there were some tests
done on people, a section of people were taken, and they were
asked that are you racist. And they all said, clearly, we're not
racist, we have who we have absolutely nothing to do with
racism. We don't agree with any kind of discrimination racism.
However, when they were actually put under certain test conditions,
they realized that the inherent racism that they had within them,
there were very few people without any kind of racism. I mean, think
about it. If you're a Moroccan, you will have some ideas about
people from Somalia. If you're Somalian, you may have ideas about
people from Morocco, from India or Pakistan, for that matter.
Sometimes these words come out. Sometimes these thoughts come in
the mind, we don't realize that we're being racist without
realizing it. So an ideology is something very deep rooted.
So basically, you may believe in something without even realizing
that you believe in that thing, or that's the way you think.
Among all of the places in any country, it's generally
universities, which will be the place that will have the most
liberalism, the place of liberalism, in any culture. So
generally, the ideology in any university, is generally
liberalism. Now, when we say University, I could also say many
workplaces, if you are working with many people of other
religions, in a western capital or a Western country, this is what
you're going to come to face, face to face with as Muslims.
Generally speaking, we're not going to, we are not going to
share a lot of the ideology.
Right? This is where the tension comes. You we find it so difficult
to try to make people realize why we believe in certain things that
we believe in why a woman has to be covered. Right? Why do we have
to just drop everything and pray five times a day? It's an ideology
issue.
The best way,
basically, if you don't understand that this is the basis of the
conflict, then it's going to be very difficult to deal with this
conflict. We're constantly on the defensive, putting out fires, we
can never objectively explain ourselves. We are constantly
having to answer for things that people bring up in the media. And
then we have to say, no, it's like this or like that. Some people get
it right in the answers, while others get it wrong.
The way to deal with this, strangely enough, is to actually
discuss these things with people to openly discuss these people to
overtly discuss these things, bring them up, even if they don't
want to discuss it. This is what's going to make a healthier society.
Questions that people don't even consider to be questions because
it is just so so settled in their mind that this is the way the
world has to be. This is the idea we're speaking about.
This is important. Universities generally are supposed to be the
best places for these things, because it's a place where ideas
are discussed, ideologies should be discussed as well. And this
works out to be very good for people, you know, you see the
people who become Muslim reverts. The reason is that somebody has
challenged their ideology. They've started thinking of the world
different so many new Muslims you will meet, who will say this is
what we felt about Islam before I could never see myself as a
Muslim. Then what happened? What changed? Somebody challenged their
fundamental ideas and managed to let them see it in a more
objective fashion.
Basically, what is liberalism? Liberalism, which is pretty much
the dominant idea of the West, and it's a global idea right now, is
the idea that humans should not be constrained and limited in any way
whatsoever by anything, not by religion, nor by tradition. So if
you tell them this is my tradition, this is my culture.
This is my religion. People just think that is just so old
fashioned.
This is the first response, they just think it's all fashion. Why
do you how can you still believe in this? Have you heard they say,
a man from 1400 years ago, you still believe in a religion that
came down 1400 years ago? How is that possible world has moved on.
This is the idea of liberalism, the only thing they say that can
constrain us in our laws, or public life, or inform our
morality etc, is reason, rational argument only, not traditional
religion, only reason. Sometimes, they prove this, you know,
sometimes they use rational arguments, empirical arguments,
nobody should judge anything except through reason, through
human reason alone only. Now, let's take a simple example of
this. One of the manifestations of this, one of the examples of this
very amateur way of looking at it is, there's an idea out there,
which is very much ingrained in liberalism is that you can do
anything, as long as you do not harm others. Have you heard that
you're allowed to do anything as long as you don't harm anybody
else. Now, this is something we're all aware of, right? This is a
general kind of idea. If you do something in the privacy of your
bedroom, that's fine. If you do something outside that is going to
harm somebody else, it's an issue. That's why you get so many people
who will say, you know, I don't believe this, that and the other
as long as you're a good person, as long as you don't think evil of
anybody else, as long as you let people live and do what they want.
This is the way of harmony in this world. Sounds like a, you know, a
great idea in that sense. However, let's look at it from a rational
perspective. If you take this idea that you are free to do as you
want, you are free, or you have the right to do as you want, as
long as you do not hurt or harm anyone. Now, this seems to be a
very simple statement, and most people will just accept it, most
will just accept it.
However, let's look at this carefully. This statement is so
full of number of assumptions, number of assumptions, which many
people think that they are, there's no other way about it. For
example,
take the first word, you have
the last word in here, which is as long as you don't harm or hurt
anybody. What does harming or hurting mean? How much hurts? Are
you speaking about? Who is going to be hurt? Who is hurt? Are you
speaking about? Is that something that is agreed upon? Or is that
something that is open to interpretation? For example, you
have the right to do whatever you want, as long as it doesn't harm
anybody or hurt anybody? If Muslim hearts are hurt by depictions of
the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu sallam, then should that still be
a right or not? And the next point,
what is the right? Okay, so let's understand the right as being a
human right? A human right is basically all those rights that a
human should have, because they are human beings, every one of us
who decides that, let's look to the UN. So many, many decades ago,
there's the Human Rights charter of the UN. And within that number
19, I think it says you have the freedom to express whatever you
want, express your religion, express your ideology, express
what you believe what you love, whatever you want to do, this is a
fundamental human right that they should be able to express what
they want. Right. Now, there's another article number 29, which
says that these rights can be limited, or curbed or restricted
for the purpose of morality, or public order, for example of
public safety. So now, we understand that the rights that
you're supposed to have of saying whatever you want, that suddenly
becomes restricted.
Now, who's going to restrict it? Each country and its laws can
restrict these rights. So now, for example,
who makes these decisions as to what the dominant ideology should
be of the time?
Is it going to be certain countries? Or is it going to be an
overall group of people or whoever it is? Who is it going to be? I'll
give you an example.
France doesn't allow the veil. Right? There's been massive issues
there about the veil. However, it does allow * on the beaches.
Right? Okay, that's fine. There's a freedom of right there that they
say but this one no, because of whatever reason. Now, let's go to
America. In America, if you've got a man and he wants to go jogging,
he is allowed to go jogging and take his top of so he is allowed
to go jogging *, it's not against the law. However, if a
woman wants to do that in America, not in France, but in America, is
it allowed in the majority of states probably all over
For America, that is not allowed, they will, they will, she will be
reported the police will come. So in a country like America, where
it is allowed to wear the veil,
it is allowed for a man to be *, but not for a woman to be
*, you go to France. And it's the other way around. These
decisions are being made by the individual countries.
So what is really human rights, then who decides what the human
right is? At the end of the day, it's the ones who are in power,
who have the most influence who have the media on their side, the
greatest propaganda machines, etc, they will decide, and everybody
will have to agree to that, or be considered to be backwards or
whatever the case is. So for example, let's take another
example of Egypt, Egypt, for anybody who's been there recently
in the last 15 years, right? Because I know in 1950s, it was
different. But in the last 510 15 years, about 85% of the women,
they wear the hijab, the head covering the hijab, right? We're
not discussing the niqab, yet. We're discussing the head cover.
But how many people how many women wear hijab? They're
about 85%.
Are you? You guys following? 85%? How many do not? How many do not
observe the hijab? That means 15%? Now, is that an overwhelming
majority or not? Now, I'm not saying this, but imagine that they
decided that in front, sorry, in Egypt, because 85% of the women
wear hijab anyway, let's make a law mandating hijab for everybody,
for every woman. Do you think that's gonna go down? Well, in the
international community, will that be considered to be fine with
human rights? Or will that be considered to be against human
rights?
Right now in America isn't an against human? And again, I'm not
vouching for this. I'm not proposing I'm not proposing this.
But isn't there a gender discrimination there in that
sense, but people have just accepted it, they haven't thought
about it too much. They've accepted it. So whoever has the
power, the prevailing influence, they're going to determine these
things? That is why
because things do not conform to a western culture and ideology.
Egypt would not be would have a very hard time in mandating
something like this as an example. It's a hypothesis.
Questioning an ideology, though, living in the West, in
universities, with our colleagues, people, we see our neighbors, etc,
and a friendly discussion, you know, over maybe some Buchla, or
whatever the case is, right? Or biryani, if that's what you do.
Right?
Questioning that ideology, in a nice friendly sense. This is what
we're going to have to do to survive. And that is the way we're
going to be able to contribute to a better society.
And questioning such deep rooted and blind assumptions are going to
sound very ridiculous and absurd to many people. Like your question
that idea. I've never thought about this is something that I was
born with something I've been believing all my life. You know,
these are things for example, there was a reporter that came to
our masjid, our place of prayer in America when I was an imam there.
And he he obviously sat on the men's side. Afterwards, he wrote a
really nice article. Now, any reporter that comes they're gonna
go, you know, in one direction or the other. Mashallah, he really
understood he said, this is I found myself sitting
for the first time since I was a very young boy in an all male
gathering. And it's, it was so unusual, it seems so strange. But
then this is what he said. He said, I guess that's just our
perspective. Because we are now so used to even teenage pregnancies,
we see no problems with them. So he sees where he's coming from.
And he's able to enlighten himself that this is a different way of
doing things. Right. This is what's important to challenge
people on an intellectual basis. What's their thoughts? Why do they
believe that? Can you not appreciate that somebody else
believes something different? And for the health of a any Western
society, this is going to have to happen? Why is it going to have to
happen? Because if you I was in Oslo recently, one in 10 people in
Oslo is a Muslim. I came back to London and I started thinking
after reading that statistic, in London, one out of every eight
people is Muslim, Rotterdam, I'm sure it's more than that, in terms
of how many people are Muslim in terms of the percentage of Muslims
in this country in this city, in this town or whatever you want to
call it? And for us to be able to get along with each other in a
respectable way.
We're not trying to shove Islam down people's throats, we just
want that we be respected for our ideology as well, while being
contributing citizens, citizens that contribute not just consume,
I know we've had problems. I don't know if it's this country or
another country, where people were very open minded about immigrants
coming in. But certain people among our immigrants came in and
started to milk the system, abused the system, mashallah free money,
you know, free welfare system. So let's do some work, but also claim
claim claim. And thus, people began to be angry to say why these
foreigners coming and taking our work, are we taking our money away
for free, they're driving no Mercedes, right, they get really
angry about these things. So when when people have issues and they
see other people cheating the system, it gives a bad name.
That's why Muslims are gonna, we're not saying we just want our
rights and we don't contribute, we have to contribute. We can't be
passive individuals just consuming, consuming, consuming,
we have to contribute. And that's what that's what's going to be
different. So for example,
if you are working somewhere and you want time off for Joomla,
and, or for any normal prayers, or prayer, for example, and you go
and say, This is my right, as a Muslim, whatever, you know, I need
to be able to pray, but you go late for work, you leave 510
minutes before you don't do your projects properly. You don't do
your work properly. You don't you, you know you discount here and
there? Are you going to get any respect is there going to be any
respect for us, there's going to be no respect for us. If you are a
contributor, a person of value, a true Mohammadi, a true person of
integrity, then people are going to respect what you have. I'll
give you a simple example. I had a friend who worked in an
engineering firm, a firm, he was a he was an engineer for
superconductor technologies. This was right in the 90s. In the early
2000s, when, you know the mobile phones, the cell phones had just
come out and they needed the superconductor technology. He
mashallah was a very good engineer, very humble man, a half
Egyptian, half Palestinian, and he's working in America in this
firm, he would refuse to go, he would refuse to go to the annual
general meetings because they would serve wine in the annual
general meetings. But he was an asset to the company. After about
two, three years, he says his supervisor came to him and said to
him, we'd like you to come to the annual general meeting this year,
it's in, you know, a few weeks or whatever. He said, You know, he
mentioned his name, he said, Paul, or whatever, you know, I can't
come because as you know, I've got an issue I can't sit, you know,
with with wine being served. And you know, what his supervisor
tells him, as soon as it tells him that, you know, we've changed the
policy this from this year, we're no longer we're no longer going to
serve wine anymore in our annual general meetings. Now, if you
think to yourself that, how can I do something I know, we're not
hoping for miracles like this all the time. But what I'm trying to
say is that if you are an asset, and you're a Muslim, at the same
time, then you will be able to in people's minds link success to
Islam, not failure to Islam, which the media is putting through,
which basically, unfortunately, many of our people seem to be
contributing towards as well around the world, a failure story,
unfortunately, that's what's going on. I want to provide some
optimism here, that the idea is that if you are in a good position
in countries like Holland and England and Norway and America and
other places where you have rights, where you can work in
different fields, well educated Muslims are generally well
educated, right? At least a second generation. Mashallah, right? I
was just speaking to a brother, his father's a taxi driver, but he
himself is a dentist, his brother's a doctor, his sister's a
pediatrician. I think his other sister is a doctor as well. I
mean, this means that we're gonna, we're gonna have some huge assets,
right? We're going to have some huge assets, but that comes with
responsibility. Are those huge assets? All this learning all this
education? Is it going to just live the Western dream as such of,
of this liberalism that do as you wish, do as you want? Forget your
deen your tradition and so on and so forth? Or are you going to hold
fast onto your deen and, and contribute? That's the difficulty.
That's the difficulty. So what we have to do is we have to challenge
assumptions in friendly discussions. Give you another
example.
One of the biggest things that we're dealing with today is that
Muslims are violent people. So there's concepts of Muslim
violence, Islamic violence, and so on and so forth. I guarantee you,
every one of us is beaten with this stick all the time. Right. In
fact, so many Muslims, I've actually started to believe that
we have violent people, and they try to say, I'm not the one
majority maybe but I'm not the one. It's become such a concept,
such an ideology that's becoming so ingrained in people that it's
even become ingrained in many wisdoms. They start using the same
lingo. Now, let's let's look at some statistics here. The reason
why we get beaten with this stick
And people make us believe this is the case is because we don't know
statistics. So if we take how many, let's give me an idea of how
many Muslims exist in the world today. Okay? All right, the range
is between 1.5 to 1.8 billion. That's the range. So let's take
the lowest range 1.5 billion to make it easy. 1.5 not even
1.8 1.5. How many Muslims have been incriminated on any kind of
terrorism charge throughout the world?
In the last, you know, 1015 years or whatever. Do you know what the
percentage is? And when we say terrorism, I'd say take the
broadest definition of terrorism, not not the most restrictive form,
but take the broadest for anything that is you know that anybody
labels terrorism, consider that out of 1.5 billion Muslims. How
many Muslims throughout the world have been incriminated in any kind
of terrorism charges? Do you know what that percentage is?
Okay, Marshall, there's some seems to be some enlightened people here
who are taking some either really good wild guesses, right? Or they
know their statistics. Right? But basically what it is, is that
maybe you're exaggerating a bit more, but 2.8 point 00 6%.
Point 00 6%, not even 1%.
So then, why do we are we led to believe that Muslims are the
violent people? Why is it that when a Muslim does something, or
tries to do something, or is caught with something
incriminating, it becomes big news, but when others do it, it's
just a small idea, a small write up a small article, a small
mention,
this is what it is because we are being led to believe the same
thing. And this is very, this is very bad for our deen, because
this takes people away from wanting to be Muslim, because then
they start thinking Islam is violent, not just some Muslims.
Yes, some Muslims are violent, they spoiled it for the rest of
us. They think they're doing some great mission by going and killing
a few innocent people here and there. And then for the rest of
us, we get checked at airports, we get, you know, we get bullied, we
get discriminated against the 1.51 point 8 billion Muslims then take
the brunt of that force. And these people think that they've got some
kind of shahada, and they've gone.
That's the problem here. Now, let's take another quick example.
Before I move on to another topic. They keep saying that Muslims
don't speak out against terrorism. Nobody says, you know, nobody
talks about terrorism. Nobody says we were against terrorism, they
keep telling us that Subhanallah there's a non Muslim Professor
Charles Kurzman. If you go on his website, search for Charles
Kurzman.
If I'm saying that name, right, K u r, Zed ma N, he's got the whole
list of people who've, who voiced the you know, who voiced something
against terrorism, including everything from Sheikh Yusuf al
Qaradawi to the Mufti of Egypt to the Mufti of, of Saudi Arabia,
right. And to Darwin, they were born in India, he's got
everybody's name listed down there, a huge list of people. Now,
if we're not aware of that, and we're challenged by this, Hey, how
come you guys don't speak? You just think about your local imam
in the masjid. But you should look at the big voices, and all of
these things are there, okay? The main example?
Muslims, they they're gonna say that Muslims justify the killing
of innocent people. Now, let's say they obviously mentioned al Qaeda
and bin Laden, etc. Maybe that's a bit of an old story right now,
because they they came into Afghanistan and messed with the
Taliban Taliban then became al Qaeda or the al Qaeda were
created, then there was the whole thing against al Qaeda, then they
created the Islamic so called State
mashallah, and I get a smile at the end of it as well. Okay, that
means,
by the way, I'm Indian. And in places like this, you get a lot of
things that are allowed for Indians that are generally not
allowed for Moroccans or Turkish people. So I guess I think I can
take a few more minutes.
You just wasted another minute.
Anyway.
So let's just take they generally quote bin Laden's
justification or argument for killing innocent people in
American New York? What is the what is the argument? The argument
is that because they voted for the government, they are also implicit
in that regard. Now, again, that's sounds like an Islamic argument.
Anybody who voted it's a democratic argument, really, at
the end of the day, Sunday Sunday argument. However, you can argue
about that all you want. somebody's done it already. Now,
how would you argue this case? For example, if you keep abreast with
these things, there is a very famous law professor at Harvard,
right one of the top universities of America, whose name is Alan
dosha pitch, he is very a great proponent of Israel and so on and
so forth.
When Israel bombed Gaza, you know, two years ago, three years ago,
whenever it was recently, his idea, his argument for the
justification of killing innocent people in which more innocent
people who killed it and others, who said it's justified. Why?
Because they voted for Hamas. They support Hamas. That's why isn't
that the same argument that bin Laden so called used for killing
innocent people in in America? If that's bad, isn't this bad? But
no, this is a celebrated scholar who says,
we have so many of these cases, we have so many of these inequalities
in a sense, but unfortunately, liberalism is supposed to be a
doctrine of tolerance. That's how it started. Because of the
religious repression in Europe. Liberalism became the new
ideology, right after a lot of hard work and a lot of a lot of
oppression no doubt that there was a lot of oppression in Europe
through the church. It's supposed to be a doctrine of tolerance. But
however, today, unfortunately, liberalism has, how much is it
willing to tolerate anything but itself, for example, it's becoming
very coercive, it's becoming militant, in some ways, you must
have such an such a curriculum, this is what we're dealing with in
England, right, you must have such and such a curriculum, you must
have this and that view, about alternative sexualities about
gender, et cetera, et cetera, increasing number of boxes,
Muslims having to tick tick wherever they go. And the whole
idea and premise of liberalism was to open up people's horizons. But
that's unfortunately not happening. We have to help this,
we have to be proponents of this idea, in that sense, help people
think about others, because it's a reality that we're going to live
with a lot of Muslims are strange people around us. Now, there's
another very interesting, you know, Europe's xenophobia against
immigrants and different traditions. One of the arguments
of where that comes from, is because of liberalism, and
modernity, and postmodernity, where anything goes the old
traditions of even Europe, Victorian England, Edwardian
England, I don't know, the equator, the you know, the, the
equivalent in, in Dutch, so, you know, forgive you for that. But
all of those traditions of those times have gone, it's all about a
bottomless endless possibilities. That's what liberalism is about,
you can think and do whatever you want. It's a very fluid kind of
system with no boundaries or ends. That's how you can make money out
of thin air today, you know, because of the banking sector, the
stock exchange, and so on and so forth. However, a lot of these
people, they are base fitness, they sense
a feeling of loss of their tradition of good old, maybe Dutch
traditions or whatever it was that that had been replaced. And, you
know, the only people that they see who are different is that
Muslim that Turkish guy with that darkness, you know, I mean,
subhanAllah you travel around Rotterdam, all you see is keep up,
keep up. And you see his shawarma. And you see, what do you call it?
I don't see I didn't see. But to be honest, I didn't see so much
biryani, right. I just saw keep up and show Arman donor and this done
and other hamdulillah but where's the where's the, you know, I still
haven't had any Dutch food,
you know, SubhanAllah. So it's really strange
area that we're living in. So now to finish off, I'm going to have
to really
move on and finish this off.
We have to really, really wizened up to these issues. Because
this concept we're dealing with has no soul. Because it has no
Osona no fundamentals, anything goes whatever, you know, whatever.
Whatever goes. That's why to be honest, Muslims have a hard time
dealing with this because Muslims believe in certain fundamentals,
we believe in certain things which are black and white, in you know,
there's a lot of gray matters well, but there's a lot of black
and whites, And subhanAllah many of the things which are considered
to be orthodox positions that are accepted in our liberal societies
today, in another 50 to 100 years, those may become outrageous,
that's the way things are moving with everything that we see around
us, you know, technology, ideology, everything. It's a very
hard task for Muslims to deal with these things and to maintain their
faith. That's why in the two minutes that I've got to finish
off, I just want to mention one final inshallah positive note
because we need a heart that will be able to stay with Allah
subhanaw taala because we may lose everything of this world and I
don't say it's that bad. Inshallah, right, we've still got
a lot of things, and I'm very hopeful, but we must have a
connection with Allah subhanaw taala. And in that regard, I just
want to leave you with five very, very, very, very simple
Little things that if you do on a daily basis, then inshallah you
will remain strong inside your hope and your trust in Allah will
remain. And in sha Allah you will feel at least not depressed and
you will feel very hopeful. First and foremost 100 is still far in
the morning and evening. I know this is going from academic
talking to like some aspect of spirituality. But this is because
we are spiritual beings, right we have a connection with Allah 100
So far in the morning and evening. The benefit of this is that if
whatever we've done wrong in the daytime will be forgiven if we do
the 100 is take part in the evening stuff with Allah Hara beam
equilibrium we wanted to but then in the morning we do another 100
So everything from the nighttime that gets forgiven. So now we're
forgiven and pure Insha Allah, then we need some baraka and
blessing. So we do number 200 salawat and Rasulullah sallallahu
alayhi salam Allahumma salli ala Sayyidina Muhammad wa early so you
dinner Mohamed El verde crystal Lim 100 times morning and times
evening. The benefit of that is you get some blessing, you get
baraka and we need baraka and blessing one by one blessing from
ALLAH is sufficient, so we get 100 That's wonderful. Number three
Quran if you can only read half a page a day or one page a day Hello
has no problem but read at least that much a day where they be on
your phone or somewhere else read at least that much whether you're
in the tram on transit wherever you're going, make that a habit
number three, number four. Number four, spend some time with Allah
every day. That means just private time with Allah. Unfortunately,
our salads were very distracted in our salah, even those of us who
are pray, who pray we Allahu Akbar, and then we go on automatic
pilot As salam o aleikum wa rahmatullah you have arrived.
Right? So we spend five to 10 minutes in just thinking about
Allah, one very simple way to do that, sit in a quiet place, head
down, close your eyes. Imagine that Allah has Rama and mercy is
coming down on your heart because his mercy is everywhere. Imagine
you're attracting it to your heart. And then you're, it's, it's
dealing with all of the darkness of our hearts. And then our heart
just begins to say, hola, hola, hola. And that we just thinking
about Allah with our heart, not with our tongue, just, you know,
really just think about Allah for five to 10 minutes, this will be
very, very powerful. And number five, the last one, so 100 is too
far, seeking forgiveness 100, the Salawat and Rasulullah sallallahu
alayhi salam, one page of the Quran number five was this
meditation or Morocco or whatever you want to call it vicar of the
heart. And number five, at least once a week, go and attend any
kind of spiritual gathering that makes you closer to Allah. Not a
not a Isaac MSA gathering or group gathering or discussion but
something that takes you close to Allah and today you have YouTube,
right? With all the crazy stuff on YouTube, there's some really good
stuff on YouTube, you can have any shape that you want, he's at your
bidding, you can make him faster, you can make him slower, you can
stop him, you know, you can change him just Subhanallah so whatever,
whatever gives you that spiritual boost, you need spiritual not
talking about a fit classes are important. I've seen classes are
important. But we need something that that incorporates within. So
if there's a tough C class that's also spiritual, then take that
one. I leave us with this. I leave us with this. My time is up. But I
am really really, really thankful to our brothers and sisters of
this of the towhead group. All the other speakers and of course all
of you who have taken this time out on a very valuable Sunday,
Sunday is a very valuable that people do all sorts of things on
Sunday for you to come here and do this. May Allah allow all of your
other chores and responsibilities to be fulfilled as well with
Baraka because you spend some time for the sake of Allah subhanaw
taala make us Allah allow us all to be turned away from here
forgiven and inspired and in sha Allah, better people who will who
will will do something for the Ummah who will be accepted with
Kabuli inshallah for the OMA May Allah accept all of us working
with that Alana and Al hamdu Lillahi Rabbil Alameen