Abdur Rahman ibn Yusuf Mangera – Lessons from the Qatar FIFA World Cup
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Salam Alaikum Welcome to What was Salatu was Salam ala Sayidina
Muhammad wa
wa Sahbihi Baraka was seldom at the Sleeman configure on 18 A
mother call Allah lot of data for your Quran and my GD one for
climate. I mean, what are the he knew what a dozen were in Arizona
in con 2 million. So the color of Allah we
will call it the IRA woman accent or COVID amendment, Dara Illa, who
are mula saleha Wakata in the Nieminen Muslimeen.
So my dear brothers and sisters, our dear friends, we can't escape
the fact that for the last few weeks, and maybe for the next few
weeks, everybody's interested in this FIFA World Cup, everybody's
discussing the World Cup. And mashallah, there's been many
occasions for Muslims to be very, very happy and excited. And to
celebrate almost, and you see many, many Muslims, Muslim
countries, Muslim individuals from all around the world celebrating
feeling a sense of pride, and so on.
At the same time, there's lots of questions. For those who are
concerned, generally, there's a lot of concern about exactly how
far we can go with this joy, and how far we can go with this
excitement and what is allowed and actually what is not allowed.
Should we be celebrating should we be supporting Qatar, who are
holding this Muslim country that is holding the World Cup, holding
the FIFA World Cup. So
I decided to look at I'm not a football person at all, not
supported a team in as far as I can remember. And I'm not really
into it, I've not watched a full match at all right? If somebody's
been watching something, there's a look at this goal. And you know, I
may have like peeked over on a little screen or something. But
I've not watched anything at all. But it's important for us to
discuss this. And the one thing really interesting is that
mashallah, this is the first time that a Muslim country has put
their neck out there and secured the World Cup, that's not an easy
thing to do, is a big countries that generally do this, and for a
very, very, very, very small country to do this. That is a
major achievement. We're not here to praise Qatar, we're not here
because that's not beneficial for us. It's not a praise game here.
This is a Jamar baon, it's a, you know, part of our Joomla service.
So it's not a place just to, you know, praise somebody, it's the
lessons we can learn from what has happened. So that we can then from
that macro lesson, maybe we can apply some micro lessons, and we
can contribute to the betterment of the world from some of the
lessons and the challenges that this has provided. And that's
really, what I want to do is just analyze it a bit. First and
foremost,
we have to, we have to point out the fact that sticking to your
principles is very, very important. And that is something
that we've noticed from this sticking to your principles, very
relevant to us, because we live in as a minority Muslims are a
minority community, within the broader non Muslim community,
people of other faiths and so on. And a lot of time, we have the
same challenge of leaving religion at the door of your workplace. You
can be religious, but when you come to the workplace, when you
come to school, when you go wherever you go, there should be
no religion, their religion is a private thing. But in Islam,
religion is not just a private thing. It has many, many public
manifestations. In fact, Joomla is a public manifest manifestation,
it is a public manifestation, that hijab is a public manifestation
soon as you go out, and so on. There's a number of other rules
that relate to inter personal relationships into community
relationship into religious relationships. Islam is
totalizing. And there's no there's no way to be apologetic about
that. And if anybody is and they leave the Islam by the door, then
that's really difficult that that that means we're not fully
entering into Islam where so now what has what can we draw from
what Qatar has done? At the end of the day, this is a small country
somehow, however, they secured the World Cup that's besides the point
here, right, whatever they did, we don't know. But they got they
secured it. And then after they stuck to their principles, and
that's what I'm personally most amazed about. And they played it
strategically. There was no discussion of banning alcohol
beforehand. As far as I've been told, it was only two days before
that they mentioned this point and that was too late. Everybody
brought their tickets. Many people that already there, you don't
cancel something.
So they played it very strategically. And then they stuck
to that that there will be no the it was banned in the stadiums, at
least in the stadiums it was banned. They may have allowed it
in certain very restricted, you know cases.
are restricted places but not in the stadium. And of course, there
was an uproar about that. But then there's been so many positive,
positive reactions to that, that it's just a much creates a much
better atmosphere, the women and children feel a lot more secure,
because there are no rowdy drunk people after a match going and
causing nuisance or within the match causing a nuisance. And you
just see that and compare that to many other matches where the drink
is flowing freely. And then what would happen in that, because
everybody really knows that drink does cause those kinds of things.
You might want to be blind to it for a while, when you want to
indulge just like we know that too much cheesecake is bad, but then
we just, you know, ignore that part when we want to enjoy it for
you know, for some time, there's no there's no comparison between
cheesecake and wine, by the way, Obeah, for that matter. So they
played it very, very well. Everybody, when I heard and I said
I'm not into football, I don't do any of this kind of stuff. But
when I heard that the BBC did not show the opening ceremony. I'd got
curious, I said, what what was so bad about the ceremony, they
didn't want to show it, then I realized, and if you look at this,
and I looked at, I just scan through it. And what I noticed in
there is that there were very few women represented in there. Right?
There were very, very few women, if at all.
Of course, there was a bit of music, there was a lot of drum
music. So this guy playing a drum or something like that.
And a lot of give us
and then it was mostly dark. So you couldn't really see
individuals. You couldn't really see much nakedness at all. I mean,
I don't think there was much nakedness. There wasn't much
nakedness at all, right? So I think all of that was
premeditated. Because while I was looking at this, or looking for
this, I saw opening ceremonies of other World Cups, and write
straightaway, you can tell them big difference. There's just so
much *, there's just so much more being displayed in the other
ones, if you look at the Beijing or whatever, it's a massive thing.
I think this is premeditated. And then mashallah to have started
with a verse of the Quran.
Right for the first time ever, something like that on such a,
because when BBC doesn't want to do something, you know that
something's probably happening, which is right, right. So
those are the things that I noticed from there that it must
have been very premeditated. It wasn't something I mean, I would
expect the other countries who may have wanted to may have not had
that principle stance, they want to just outsource all of this
country's outsource everything,
such as what the Gulf countries do. I mean, it's Indians, and
Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis and Westerners, that are doing
everything down there, but it seems like they had a grip on all
of this, they manage the whole thing. That means stick to your
principles. Now I know that there's there could have been
abuses, and there could have been all of the other stuff. And there
could be a truth to all of that. And maybe it is true part of it,
and all of that kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, we want to
look at the positives of because there's negatives and positives in
everything. We can't dismiss the positives just because of some
negatives. We call out the negatives, but it's very important
to understand the positives. And if Muslims feel good about this,
it brought a lot of the nations together that was supposed to be
enemies before when one team were one. They all came together
because you felt like you know when people when Morocco wins,
people think you know Muslims get happy when Tunisians Muslims get
happy, even though you may have never been to Tunisia, they may
have never been to Morocco, there is this global affinity within the
Ummah, I know, this isn't, you know, this isn't some major battle
or something like that. But, you know, at the end of the day, this
is a little thing that people have people have enjoyed.
And the major thing is that they prepared it in a way if it's true,
what they say, I haven't been there, but from people, you know,
reports, the data that has taken place for a lot of the people that
went there, so maybe there may be less people from the Western
Europe, but a lot of people from South America, a lot of other
countries have turned up that they still have full stadiums. And
mashallah so many people converting to Islam, being able to
see a Muslim way of life. And that's really important to see,
because the countries are really apparently showing a lot of their
hospitality and serving the people talking to them, welcoming them.
And that is amazing, because that is Muslim lifestyle. And the whole
thing has in the West become a Muslim thing, a Muslim, a Muslim
issue, not just the Kateri issue. Clearly, it's anybody who's
critiquing it from the west is critiquing it because it's
Islamic. And they don't want that to happen. But it was too late.
After the security. I don't know how many years ago it was just too
late. So from this, the one thing that has really come out is the
hypocrisy.
At the end of the day, if you're trying to please someone,
you have to realize whether they can be pleased or not. And at what
cost can they be pleased? I think we really have to understand that.
And once you understand that, then you will realize whether it's
worth trying to please somebody or not. Whether it's worth spending
your whole life, sacrificing, giving up chopping
destroying your own principles because you want to please
somebody for what?
For a little few, you know, for a little few games, right. And yet
there's other people who don't do that, and Hamdulillah, they still
survive, and they still are successful, but they win the dunya
and akhira. And if you make those kinds of sacrifices, where you
have to give up your principles, you might win a bit more of the
dunya you may become mo from Muhammad for a few days, you know,
of your life, or Sam from Islam. But at the end of the day, what's
going to be there for the hereafter? Because you've already
tried to get what you want and not had the sacrifice Allah tests us.
So I think this really treated teachers that a little, a little
small country, a small country like that, stick to their
principles, and then on the whole LGBT issue, and then mashallah
they spokesman, they chosen the right spokesman, I think that's
another lesson that we have to learn that you need the right
spokespeople. Whenever we have problems in the Muslim community
related to either schools or something else that happened. We
don't have the right spokespeople to be able to provide the right
narrative that needs to be provided. A lot of the time, it's
the really heated up people who shout, and they really mess up the
situation even worse, this guy, I mean, the explanation was that the
reasons why we cannot accept the LGBTQ is you have to understand
that in the West, it's about individual rights, that trumps
everything individually, if somebody wants to feel that way,
then we need to support that. Whereas where we come from, I
mean, he's saying that where we are, it's about community rights.
There's a community trend and customs and culture that has to be
maintained over individual rights. So another way of thinking, but
when you're in the West, you don't understand that because we're it's
become so ingrained in us this postmodern thinking that you're,
you, whatever you think is true, whatever I think is true, even
though they're both opposites. As long as we don't harm each other,
you know, you can go ahead and think what you said what you think
is true, do what you want to do, I can do what I want to do, as long
as I don't harm each other.
That means that it's about the individual, the individual is God,
almost I mean, that's in other words, whereas there, it's more
about the community. It's about community ethics, community
culture. And that was that's a good argument that if somebody
listens to in a calm way, they will understand that that's
another point of view. And hopefully, that means that they
will have less poison when they speak about these things.
So the Dow aspect of it, that they actually prepared, the Dow
aspects, calling dour people, more ovens, opening up mustards, having
our programs, and mashallah, and then really, at the end of the
day, I think what really matters is actions speak louder than
words. So it looks like they actually showed it, they stuck to
their principles. They gave the Dawa. And they tried to convince
people of the beauty of Islam, the rightly chosen versus Hadith
everywhere, so that people can because people are hungry today.
It's just they don't get exposure to these things we saw even with
this, the major media outlets don't want to put in the ceremony.
They don't let the people see the sadness, the frustrations
performed by some of the prep players. Right? You see that? And
that's all the hypocrisy. They don't want to show the religion
because religion is very powerful. And why don't they show it if it
wasn't so powerful? If it wasn't so significant? Why would they?
Why would they refuse to show it, but they turn away from that they
will show other sports people doing their weird signs or
whatever it is, and that's fine, that signature signs that others
do, but they won't show Muslims doing it. Why? Because there's a
profound impact somewhere. Right? It's having an impact because
Islam has its own power. Right? I mean, if people were to look at
Islam, and understand Islam, or try to understand it, someone
looking at us, they may get turned off. But somehow they look at the
book first. And they look at the Quran, and they understand what it
is. And they see the beauty of it, because sometimes we individuals,
some individuals put people off Islam. So actions speak louder
than words. And I think the one thing that I have to mention,
out of all of this, how does such a small country
win the World Cup, and then
make sure FIFA is on their side. And then they managed to make sure
that all of their principles are adhered to, to the best of their
ability, despite going against every other convention of a World
Cup beforehand. The no alcohol and all of the rest of it, and
standing up to the pressures against them for not allowing such
and such
because they've got a lot of money.
That's the only way you're going to pull this up and why am I even
mentioning this.
The only way you can pull something off is you can you can
use your money. And what's the lesson in that for us? And this is
a Hadith which says that there will come a time and the only
thing of benefit will be dinars and Durham's pounds and dollars or
whatever. Because that's the
Just wall country they've done so many things that are anti Western,
yet they have an American base there. I don't know if that's a
good thing or a bad thing or what strategy that is, I'm not a
politician. I'm not into political science. So I could be totally off
the mark here. But one thing that's for sure that you can't
pull this through, and then stand your position and have yourself,
you know, succeed in this unless you've got a lot of money, that
means we need to have money. That's very, very important. But
money that is channeled in the right direction, not money, that
is for selfish gains only. Now the World Cup, yes, lots of money was
spent in that huge amounts of money multiple times more than
spent anywhere else. Of course, things have become a bit
expensive. But even if you factor in a lot of money, of course, the
countries are saying that now they have a tube system, the metro
system, and their own infrastructure is benefiting and
so on. Yes, a lot of that money could have been spent elsewhere.
They could have alleviated poverty from so many different places,
they could have talked about Palestine and mashallah, there is
a lot of discussion about Palestine anyway, taking place
that just mashallah seems to be in the consciousness of the Muslim
ummah. Alhamdulillah we can say I'm sure the Palestinians are
happy, Muslims are happy that Palestine is in the conscious
pneus of the Muslim ummah, which is very, very important. You know,
when you see the clips from there about fans, and even others
challenging the idea that just shows that even among non Muslims,
if you give them a scope to see the right narrative, they will
take the right course, because that's human being to do that,
just when you constantly bombard people with the wrong narratives
in multiple fields, then you lead people because people are like
sheep, and this is this is the problem, but you need money. And
even in the same thing in this country, there's a lot of other
groups in the world that have gotten somewhere because of money.
Because you need to campaign, right, and people work with money
in survival. So the human being is a slave to, to gratitude, to
assistance to benevolence to goodness, and that is very, very
important. We really need to focus on mashallah the Muslim community
does have a lot of money after 60 years of being in this country,
the Muslims do have a lot of disposable income. The problem is,
what I have seen is that a lot of the people who have money, they
never they haven't sat down, they haven't sat down. And really think
about this. Many people who have big individual wealth, they
haven't ever sat down and thought, let me really count how much money
I've got. They do that to see how much they can invest. But they
have never sat down to say I've got a lot of money, let me
actually see how much I'm making, to see how much I could really
comfortably give for another course, except my own selfish
gain, gain, gain gain.
Really, I don't think a lot of people have done that. They've got
huge amounts of money swirling around in their various
investments, but they have sat down to think I need to do
something else. Let me see how much I can do. Whatever that is,
give me an example a masjid was being built somewhere in one of
the local areas. And they went they said, bus drivers came and
give them 10,000 pounds of their savings. Bus drivers would save
that money give you 10,000 pound the individual went to a big
property tycoon who buys a house every month who can buy every
month with his profits are 700,000 townhouse that is profit from his
portfolio. So you can buy a new house for worth 7000 700,000
pounds, which many of us struggle to, you know, to even think about.
And he said he didn't give me anything, he has to buy that next
house because he had to add one more to the 150 or 200 He already
has. Because that guy's never thought about it. He's just
thinking Money, money, whatever he's been driven for his parents
brought him up that way we need to succeed. What do you mean by
success in the world, a lot of us bring up our children to succeed,
which means just get lots of money that's shallow, that's only going
to take you to the end of this world, that's not going to take
you to the hereafter that has no benefit. It's just succeed in
terms of make lots of money so you can be comfortable. So you don't
have to do what me and my dad had to do, which was to struggle. So
you can have a nice house and a nice car. That's ridiculous. There
has to be some more of what you can do with your money. And this
is what we're missing in this country right now this
Alhamdulillah there's lots of people now coming up, where
they've taken they've made that calculation in their mind, I've
got a lot of money and I can actually put 10% towards good
deeds.
There's there's one mothers that that just needed the whole boiler
system, there's two guys who literally gave them 70,000 Free
they're making money but they've also made the calculation that we
can give and then they also believe in the fact that the more
I give the more Allah will give me.
That's what's missing. This is if you think about it, this is what's
missing. So really go home today. If you think you got some money
and be thankful to Allah and make that calculation. What can I
separate this is not a fundraiser, right? Dr. It is not here, right?
It's not a fundraiser, but really this thing I've been thinking
because it's the only way we can progress
As almost because we need the money that Qatar has shown that
you need money to get somewhere, otherwise nobody else would have
got that.
So, we ask Allah to forgive us and our mistakes. And we ask Allah
subhanaw taala to help us and assist us in what we do. And we
thank all of those who have done a great, great job. And may Allah
subhanaw taala of many, many good, more good things, may Allah
forgive them for the bad things. And
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rahmatullah Ricard