Abdur Rahman ibn Yusuf Mangera – MOVING FORWARD AS A MUSLIM COMMUNITY
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He come out your Hebrew Rabona general Agila Allahu wa salatu wa
salam o. Allah say you will Habibi Mustafa SallAllahu the either
either you are either early or Savi or Baraka was seldom at the
Sleeman Cathy Iran
Illa yo me Dean, Amma, Bharat
Cole, Allahu Allah, Allah, Quran and Maji. They will work on it
Hamid went to Arizona in quantum mumineen Wakata Allah Bell, who is
to a Yuna tune fee sudo realtyna, who to
call it the IRA or Jana Tokina Eema. So my dear brothers and our
dear Saturday, dear teachers, dear elders, our dear students
should be sitting on the floor to be honest. But I'm just giving you
a bit of a lecture.
So maybe it's justified to sit here in this plush plush chair.
mustards have the very plush chairs nowadays. Hamdulillah,
we've come a long way, in this community.
The earliest immigration on mass, where people abandoned the
villages and came to this country to find the new home for
economic reasons started around the end of the 1950s, early 1960s.
We've always had Muslims coming to this country 1950s for university,
Cambridge and other places, 1920s Indian diplomats and other people.
But in terms of big migration, if you think about it, many of the
people sitting here your parents or grandparents or great
grandparents, whoever it was started
in terms of big numbers 1960s And so on few messages around them. I
still remember in the 1980s Praying in basements, and small
rooms with no plaster on the walls. Nowadays, Alhamdulillah
mashallah, look at what we have now, in the midst. And it's so
calm here. Yeah, outside is the big markets. But it's so calm
here, Al Hamdulillah, what a beautiful sanctuary that Allah
subhanaw taala has given us here. A few years ago, me and my
brother, and my father, we went to Greece.
Greece is one of the most historical places in Europe, which
still has maintained much of its history along with Rome, and other
places, open Museum, numerous places, the Parthenon on the hill,
Greek civilization is older than the Roman civilization and the
Western civilization.
If you read certain books of chef, I will Hassan Ali nadwi
Rahmatullahi. La Hillman mention that the Western civilization is
based on
the Greek, the Greek or Roman civilizations.
That's where it's been, of course, they've taken a lot and developed
and advanced and changed and now confused, and is huge confusion.
There's no fixed method of anything. Now. It's all up in the
air with the post modern idea of relative truths. And you should be
happy with your truth. Whatever you think is true. You can as long
as you're happy with it. And I'm happy with what I think is truth
because there's multiple truths. That's what they say. But as you
can see that that goes completely against our religion of there
being an ultimate truth and only one truth and not multiple truths.
So that's really confusing. As long as you don't harm anybody.
You can think whatever you are, you can change who you think you
are, just because you feel different, and so on and so forth.
It's quite a confusing time. And may Allah subhanaw taala bring us
back to stability because it's not a good time to be in Allah to make
it easy for us. So there was eventually we discovered a number
of messages, almost Allah's or whatever you want to call them
in Athens,
and we went to about three of them at least.
The Bangladeshis seemed to be the most developed from what we saw
shops and mashallah little masala is in everything. There are
Pakistanis there as well, but they were mostly refugees trying to get
to somewhere else was just the starting point. didn't find any
casualties there. I'm sorry. There was just no Gujrati there. And
what was interesting, there was a Somali masjid so we prayed Salah
there and after salah they had a little meeting or some program or
something and they were serving something now mashallah, after
this program, what are you going to serve?
Biryani? Right, what they serve there and it just reminded me of
5040 years ago, 30 years ago, 3040 years ago, they served they were
literally trays of popcorn, just straightforward white popcorn.
I just salted popcorn. That's where they were giving out. And I
was just like, wow, subhanAllah that just reminds me of that time.
You know, if somebody gave up popcorn like that, you know must
Savonarola in England, you can imagine, but 4050 years ago, you
know, that was the basic thing you had.
So
it just gives a what it did is it just gave me this huge reflection
of where we are in this country, and what Allah has given us and
where we are not in terms of food, but just shows the prosperity
because you need to be advanced in a number of ways. Greece doesn't
have any official I don't think they even allow because it used to
be under the Ottomans in that Parthenon at the top, which was
where they ruled. It came under Muslim rule for many decades.
There was a minaret up there when the Ottomans are taken over. But
then after that, it was last there was one old Masjid that still is
there, but it's close. It's not a masjid. They don't allow it to be
used like that. So that's why they have to survive on underground.
Would you call it
basements and back of a shop and things like that? Allah Allah make
it prosperous? Allah Tala improve it down there. So what's going on
to the way y'all here? Some of you here, some of you are here,
because you're related to somebody who's graduating today.
I'm also related to somebody but that's not why I'm here. Right?
That's not the only reason I'm here. Actually, that is the reason
I'm here. I'm usually not here. Somehow. I don't be here for some
reason.
Because I've got some other program, but hamdulillah I'm here
today. But
if that's the only reason you're here,
then and there's others who are here for different reasons.
We need to find out what you're here for. And what exactly is
significant about this. The Buhari hatom is only going to be one
Hadith that they will comment on a Mullah Bilal sub will complete it,
the teacher or the students will read it and they'll comment on it.
And they might give you different
commentary on the Hadith, what it means and so on. And some of it
you might understand and some of it you might not, because some of
it is really high level discussion, which is very, very
relevant for the students and beneficial for students. But it's
not necessarily relevant for everybody else. But you know, it
is a Buhari Carter, what else do you expect? You know?
The others they're giving Beyonce. So the idea is that what I want to
speak about today is the significance of what's going on
here. There's many Buhari items now. We will one we were in one
last week. And if you actually wanted, you could probably do one,
you know, around this time and certain times of the year, you
could get one every week and you could get a few a week Al
Hamdulillah should never have expected before. Never have. But
the reason why you get this you only get this in certain boroughs.
This is only going to happen in new home or Hackney, or Tower
Hamlets, or Ilford this I've not seen happen in Barnet. Never seen
a single body atom, maybe not even a hip skeleton.
In Harringay, you'd be hard to find that.
And if you look at many other words of Kingston, and of
Kensington and Chelsea, you're just not going to have this down
there.
What makes this different to those areas?
If you go to West London, there's a huge mustards
and sometimes they're bigger than our East London mustards. I mean,
this is considered relatively big, large Masjid. You go to Harrow
there's two huge Masjid there one Sri Lankan and other central
mosque, you go to Ealing. And you go to Wembley and Greenfeld number
is big mustards there Mashallah. But they just don't have the Alama
that we have here.
I mentioned last week that when we were in Montenegro, which is 20 to
25%, Muslim, whole country, and Muslim for 300 years.
We've only been here said about since the 1960s, which makes us
about 60 to 70 years old as a heavy Muslim community. They've
been there over 300 years. And is only how many houses Did they say
they have in the whole country.
Five Roofers in the whole country. They've never had in their memory.
A full Tara we have them anywhere. And here you're fighting with one
another Mary but Jacob,
Toronto, and then you have to do photocards each.
hamdulillah Clapton alone has 1000 Who false have not come
Monte knew him yet. I have not counted for escape and Eastern.
But Clapton has 1000 of us hamdulillah few, you know each
house in many cases.
So we didn't have any problem in the lockdown.
hamdulillah finally my child gets it, I get to listen to my son
doing therapy that's for a lot of people. One of the amazing things
about COVID You know, was that they will probably never so many
tarawih in the world at one time than during COVID. Like in
history, there's probably because the Muslim population has never
been this big. The world population was one to 2 billion
100 250 years ago. It's only now it's seven to a billion that is
just exponentially grown. So the Muslims have grown as well.
And they've never had this many tarawih prayers all in one go in
Ramadan, Mashallah.
You have to look at the bright side of things as well, don't you?
Hopefully some good thing comes out of that. So why don't you get
this in other community hamdulillah in these communities,
you have Muslim schools, you have early mock classes. You have
Island classes from here, in about four miles in each direction. If
you count the places that they teach full Olim Alima class is
about at least 15 According to my last count, and I'm sure it's
increased since then.
15 Alia where Buhari is taught command. That's not. That's not
easy. I'm telling you. I've traveled throughout Europe.
I don't know if there's any other place where it's like that
nowhere. Look at Norway. I mean, which country do you want to talk
about in Europe? Nowhere.
So something's happening right? Alhamdulillah but then whenever
things happen, right for too long, people get complacent. And that's
what the problem is. People get complacent. They don't understand
what this Buhari is for first time there was a hard time of Buhari
when he was a chef I heard the lady came for Dunaway, probably
the first customer Buhari in England was in darlin Berry. When
has the she came in waves in 1981 or something.
And they say the crowds were because that was the first time
you had something like that. Now people say Oh, another hip
scrotum.
Another Buhari Hutton. It's not that significant anymore, but it
is very significant. But he's not significant because only Buhari
has been completed.
It's not only significant because Buhari has been completed.
It's significant for multiple reasons. Not only Buhari has been
completed, but Sahih Muslim, Swindon, Abu Dhabi Datsun and
telemovie, IGNOU, merger, and a number of other books that they've
had to study the students have had to study to get to this level. But
what's the purpose of this? See, no community, or culture can
survive without several really important components?
No culture can survive without no religion can survive without
certain components.
What are the components if we were to look at that just quickly, one
of the components is money, any civilization that wants to
prosper, that wants to get their way in certain things and that
want to develop an infrastructure to build something and to fund
things and so on. You need money. This world is all about money. Now
this what the Hadith says as well, the time will come when
it will be the only thing to benefit will be dinar and Dirham.
So we can't say don't earn money. Go ahead, you know, become
wealthy. It's just have a Muslim hearts of what you want to do with
that money. This is where the problem we've got many, many
wealthy people in this country, amazing wealth Alhamdulillah
amazing wealth. So after seven years, you better have otherwise
you're a failure.
But the problem is the Prophet, the Prophet sallallahu sallam said
How wonderful is a righteous is pure wealth in the hands of a
righteous person. And hamdulillah now we can say that there is a
marriage taken many marriages taking place between wealthy
people and orlimar wealthy people in orlimar. It's a recent
phenomenon. Because England the money is more harder than America
and India, in America and in India, you can make lots of money
very easily because money comes by much easily doctors. I've got a
student who did hits with me. When she was young, she did his with
me, then she went become medical doctor, probably what 24 years old
now something her first years paycheck in emergency medicine is
going to be $400,000. And that's the standard for emergency
medicine. Doctors get paid anywhere beyond 200,000 and more
dollars. I've seen in so many fundraisers in America, that
there'll be one guy, either a wealthy businessman or a doctor or
something I'll say
everything collected today, whatever the total figure is that
everybody will come up with I'm going to double it.
I've hardly ever seen that in England not to say that it's
because money I mean I'm not justifying for those people that
your money is hardened so don't give it you got enough Subhanallah
there's so one masjid they recently built their Masjid
mashallah, he said the you could tell where the heart is where
there's people, bus drivers who've been collecting harder and money
for several years. And they came and gave 10,000 pounds.
And he said, there's another guy who he knew they have a whole
portfolio of real estate buildings to such a degree that every month,
they can buy a 700,000 house for the investment. That's how much
the income is. And they can buy a house, a property, a new property
every month, 700 100,000 pounds, or around that price. So they went
to them, and didn't get anything. Why not only one house you miss
out, it's not even house, you only people are struggling to buy a
house here. These guys can buy cash. They're competing with
everybody else who's going to try to get a mortgage. But that money
doesn't come because it's not hot.
The money has to be there, but not in the heart, the money has to be
in your hands so you can actually use it.
And if you want role models for that isn't the time for it. But
listen to the story of abdurraqib. Now for the Alon how he became a
billionaire.
But yet he was able to just give away money like as if no problem,
give away all of the proceeds of a major travel caravan of trade that
had just come back. Just because I showed you the Allah one, I
mentioned something about him. He said, Nope, I'm gonna go into
general running and not crawling. And he said all of this as if he
said the villa
is there. You know, I'm not speaking to anybody in particular,
it's just if that's your position, So alhamdulillah now, there are
lots of wealthy people that are coming together with automa and
they're doing projects and inshallah I can see that. And what
they're doing is is not just mustards anymore, we need to think
beyond the Masjid. Right, because Alhamdulillah we have machine we
still have need Masjid. But beyond that infrastructure for the next
generations. Okay, the second group of people we need
whereas most this other service, not here, he would be very happy
with this. The second group people we need in any Muslim any for any
religious
group to survive is politicians, especially in a democracy. If
you're in a dictatorship, then Allah Tala Bucha. Right, then it
just depends on what kind of dictatorship it is, or whatever it
is. But if you are in a democracy, then remember, this is just
something that occurred if you're in a democracy, if you are not in
the driving seat, or if you're not a backseat driver, or next to the
driver, you're not gonna get anywhere. There's nothing you can
do in a democracy without you being in the driver's seat, or
being next to the driver, the friend of the driver, or the
backseat driver, telling them where to go, you make this
mistake, you're making this mistake. If you're not there, they
will not speak for you to stop complaining, and either become a
driver, or next to the driver or a backseat driver somewhere. This is
what other successful groups have done, and you're jealous of them.
Why they got this? Well, they did it because of a reason. Because
they thought about this. This is the democracy democracy means
whoever drives they get somewhere.
Right? I know it's tough to become a driver, or to be a backseat
driver. But money helps. And lots of other things help. Numbers
help, votes help. Lots of things help. But as I said, I'm just
doing this purely as an understanding of what are the
clubs? What are the integrals and the pillars for the preservation
and advancement for any society, otherwise, you will die a death
Hamdulillah we do have some good politicians. And then we have
others who are Muslim, but their career politicians that they don't
even want to be known to be Muslim, which is a bit sad. It's
very sad, in fact, but we need more. Number three, you need
Muslim thinkers for think tanks and policymaking places you can't.
I mean, mashallah, there are many, many students I see at university,
don't just go to university so that you can go there to get a
good job, where you're just going to make money and go home. How
about developing and going beyond that to a policymaking level? So
you're not just constantly being consumers earning a good wage and
consumer consumer consumer putting the money back in, right? Because
you're just so enticed by all the glamour that they provide somebody
in Dubai, this is what they say is that Dubai, you can learn a lot of
money, but a lot of people just end up spending their money there
because it's just so freely, good things are so freely available
that take your money away from you. So then what's the point of
making so much effort? Right, if you're not going to do in the
right places?
So you need a lot of infrastructure. You need a lot of
infrastructure Muslims need to be in every infrastructure job there
is so that they can provide
When there's a need, so they can provide, especially contributors
and stop being consumers, stop being just consumers stop being
contributors.
And number four, so you need money. You need thinkers, you need
politicians,
politics. And number four is you need the Obama.
Because without the Obama, you might have Muslim politicians, but
they're not going to do the right thing, who's going to give them
the righteous mindset, the guidance of where to use things,
you can have lots of money. But if there's nobody to direct where
that money goes, that money is going to go into the wrong places.
There's people out there spending money to from other countries,
they're spending money so they can become a knight, or they can
become an earl or they can get some kind of British honor.
I don't know for what for who, maybe to show a few friends.
That's what it is. This is what we do.
There's one area that I've seen, everybody has a nice car, there's
a nice houses. So everybody has a nice car. So what's the next step?
Because you got money, you need to spend it somewhere personalized
number plates.
It's just the trajectory of when you have lots of money, disposable
income, you know, then holidays and, and so on, fine, enjoy
yourself. But think about the deme. Don't just think about your
generation, let's think about what's going to happen in 100
years. That's what's important. Where is it going to go in and we
have to set all of this up. But without further Ma, you can't have
the other three centers the other three places function correctly,
Allah ma have to provide guidance. And you can see that on a micro
scale, in terms of the difference between
places like Tower Hamlets in New Hampshire and Guildford in Hackney
compared to these other boroughs where they struggle, which they
don't even have proper mucked up.
They don't have proper places for children to study so many of the
children are studying online with one Somalian are harvested from
Pakistan online.
It's not the same experience. It's not the same experience.
If you do want to go and move out to Chigwell, fine, go but then go
on to establish a masjid there. Don't go there to escape. Because
believe me I've seen we get the issues of the people and what
happens to the children eventually you might maintain it, but your
children won't really, really have to start thinking about this, not
just our survival right now. But the survival for 100 years later,
we need to set things up right 100 203 100 years later, and not
just for here. If we're not focused on expanding this beyond
how we can mashallah, there's too many alumni in England, you can
never have enough but there's lots who's going to focus on the
Balkans. So this is now for the Obama who's going to focus on
places like the Balkans, there's huge amount of and they're all
Muslims there. It's not even about doing dower to nanoSIMS is just
about providing infrastructure, basic infrastructure, what we did
here for 50 years, providing that in that, but there's a bit of a
struggle hamdulillah the South Africans on one side of the world,
they've gone to the South America, in a number of countries, they're
like Venezuela and Chile and other places. And they've started
providing the basic infrastructure for people who had been Muslim for
over 100 years, but have now lost it. These are primarily people
from Syria, Syria and Palestinian origin that have lost their faith
down there. This is what happens when you don't have structure like
this.
I've been an imam in a community that never had any mom before I
became the Imam and visited many, many communities in America.
50% of the message you could probably safely say doesn't don't
have Imams
was like, Yeah, Cassie Masjid Erica Imam Neha, is anybody leads
the prayer. It could be guy in a T shirt, no problem. It's not
particularly like that here. That would be a major blasphemy. Right?
The local doctor, somebody who can give a little, you know, little
talk, say a few ayat. Right? They will give the gym away on an every
everybody's capable of giving fatwas there.
Why? Because there's no Alama. So everybody becomes a scholar,
because I read this online and I read that online. That's what
happens. It's just gonna happen if you don't provide the roadmap. And
I And interestingly, some communities actually don't want
any mom. Some communities actually don't want any man because that is
too rigid. We need this flexibility.
We don't want the community stagnate. We need to think
further. And we need to think beyond that. If you have an idea,
as a thinking person, person with money, a person in a certain
vocation, if you're working for the defense, you're working for
the tax office, you're working for Defra, you're working for the what
is the judicial judiciary
and you have an idea there's a need down there, you need to
contact the other MMA and then try to cater for it. That's how you do
this. You're wondering what to do. That's what you do. You have to
cater for this.
And in sha Allah, every good that happens afterwards. In that area
among those people, you will be rewarded because you're the one
who took the first step. If in your community, there's no Masjid
take the first step. There's a family from Stamford Hill, they
moved to outskirts of Leicester, they bought five houses because
they've got their children, there was no mercy as a brand new area,
no Masjid there, he dedicated his garage, he made it into a masjid.
And there's no room left in that garage to pray. So now they're
getting funding together, they're gonna buy a machine, that's where
it starts. But somebody has to start that they were before he
moved there, there were many Muslims there.
But nobody decided to give their garage.
Or nobody decided to everybody had an idea. They thought it was a
great idea. You have to take the move, then you get the reward for
everything that happens. And remember, these pieces will go on
forever. And everybody that benefits on them from them will
just go on forever and you will keep getting the reward for this
afterwards. But for you to understand this, you have to know
Allah, why would you do anything? The dunya is too powerful, the
dunya is too lovely, and to adorn and so amazingly pleasurable that
why would you do anything for your deen?
The reason we don't is because we don't know Allah. We believe in
Allah. And we think that that belief will save us and inshallah
it will but we don't really know Allah. We don't know we don't have
the love of Allah. Allah is not there always in our life.
To such a degree that everything we do is for him and then we want
to do more for him. For him and for his deen and to share this
with others. We're just happy with our own
because we're comfortable. That's what we're happy with. Until you
don't recognize the law. How do you recognize Allah as law my last
two minutes or so will allow me is we need to re attach ourselves
with the Quran. And I don't mean just reading the Quran here
mashallah, we have people who read the Quran. And we have a lot of
people who don't except in Ramadan, and we have people who
don't even in Ramadan, but without that you can't because if you want
to recognize Allah, you have to read the Quran because the Quran
is Allah's word, and he tells us who he is. And you need to read it
with meaning. If you read one page with meaning a day, just open up
one page, when you're going for work or in the morning, in the
evening or with somebody else, you will really start understanding
what Islam is all about. And who Allah is because you want to hear
it from Allah Himself. How he describes his interaction with
people, what he warns us of what he encourages us to do, what He
prohibits, what he dissuades, what he discourages, and what he, how
he has dealt with people like us before and what he gives than what
he has promised. That is when you really start understanding what
who Allah is, and without the metaphor of Allah, we're dead
people.
Without the Mighty Foot of Allah without the recognition of Allah,
you can't survive a spiritual life, we're dead spiritually, then
we might be Muslim, and we go to Masjid and we do Salat, and
everything. But we're not strong enough to really do something for
the benefit of us and the next generations. So those are the few
words that I have, for this beautiful occasion, that these six
years or seven years culmination of what's going on here, what you
have come here to celebrate today is that there'll be these new
graduates who have worked very hard for the last several years
with their parents who've sacrificed them rather than
another job or, or maybe they're doing job with it. Now, this is a
beautiful thing that moved to southern Montana. So I've done
they've actually combined that you can actually have a job. And you
can also you know, mashallah study this. But these will, people will
go and teach a few people, 100 people, 200 people, 1000 people,
and that will continue. And the more Allah ma we have, the better.
So that's what you've come to celebrate not just the finishing
of one book, but rather the completion of many, many books. So
may Allah subhanho wa taala, accept this time from all of us
and accept from the students and make them useful, and all the
other order MA and make us allow us to have her father and Obama
and professionals in our, in our own children as well. Well, I feel
that why not and Al Hamdulillah here.
The point of a lecture is to encourage people to act to get
further an inspiration, and encouragement, persuasion. The
next step is to actually start learning seriously, to read books
to take on a subject of Islam and to understand all the subjects of
Islam at least at the basic level, so that we can become more aware
of what our deen wants from us. And that's why we started Rayyan
courses so that you can actually take organize lectures on demand
whenever you have free time, especially for example, the
Islamic essentials course that we have on the Islamic essentials
certificate which you take 20 Short more
modules and at the end of that insha Allah you will have gotten
the basics of most of the most important topics in Islam and
you'll feel a lot more confident. You don't have to leave lectures
behind you can continue to live, you know to listen to lectures,
but you need to have this more sustained study as well as local
law here and Salam aleikum wa rahmatullah wa barakato.