The Forgotten Legacy of Islam

Salam Alaikum everyone, here I am in one of the biggest warehouses in Britain,

a warehouse of books. This might be one of the largest collections of books in Britain, when it comes to Islamic books. And this goes to show you how much we don't know. Not that how much we do know. When you look at these books, you realize how a lot there are people working day and night working hard in writing these books, putting this literature together, and we don't even look at it, we don't even read it. You know, it's kind of life you walk through with me,

you will look through the aisles, there are 1000s upon 1000s upon 1000s of volumes on Hadith on Tafseer on Quran on history, on Virac on

commentaries, different topics, and it goes to show that we stand on the shoulders of giants. That's the point I want to make. Without realizing that we stand on the shoulders of giants, you know, Islam reached us through a lot of hard work. Many people, they gave their lives for this knowledge to reach us. They spent the days and nights the months they traveled to seek this knowledge to collect this information from different scholars around the world. And they put it together for us to read it, right? And Wallah, he we don't realize the kind of legacy we have

in places like this. This is our legacy. This is what made Islam great seeking of knowledge, the first commandment revealed by Allah subhanaw taala in his holy book, the Quran was read in the Name of your Lord Accra is Mira McCullough the holla Okay, that was the first commandment revealed upon the Prophet sallallahu Sallam Fonda Quran in the cave of Hira, the first five verses of surah 96 surah. Allah Allah revealed upon the Prophet sallallahu sallam, and the purpose was to, to wake us up to the reality of reading and seeking knowledge. So we the Muslims, were the most Bookly people in the world. And that's what made our civilization so great. We were one of the greatest

civilizations in human history, we created the largest libraries in the world. We created the best scholars, the best points, the best intellectuals, the best scientists, for that matter. The best philosophers, right? And what is the proof of that? The proof of that is all of this, all of this, if you look in these islands, these are books written by people, real people who lived once upon a time in different places. I'm talking about some are con Bahara. Daily.

Cairo in Egypt,

places like Cairo, one in Tunisia, Baghdad, in Iraq, Damascus, in current Syria, right? Even Lahore, the city of Lahore, currently Pakistan. This was the civilization of Islam from China, to a thunderous Cordoba, Cordoba, Seville, Granada. Okay, when Grenada was taken in 1492, you know, how many books are burnt by the Catholic Monarchs? Over a million books were burnt by the Catholic Monarchs, when they took the city of Granada from the Muslims, right? Where did these books come from? Who wrote them? Who produced them is the question? And the answer is, hey, the answer is that we are simply not aware of this legacy. We don't know this exists while I was walking in between

these aisles with my son Musa. And I was talking to him that do we even know that these books exist? The name the titles, the author's the topics, most of us are completely unaware of the shoulders, we are standing on the shoulders of giants, we don't even know those giants, let alone the shoulders and what they put behind? Right? These are the books, we really need to take them seriously. We can't read all of them possibly I cannot possibly read every single book in this collection, or in this place. Right? What we can do, however, is to take an area or topic seriously, and accelerate it, master it. And then we can leave a legacy behind like these people before us left. So my

brothers and sisters, that reminder is take your legacy seriously. Take your tradition seriously. Take your heritage seriously. This is your heritage. This is what we stand for. This is what made Islam great. We stand on the shoulders of giants. So when people talk about Islam and Muslims in a derogatory way, in a negative way, you need to simply show them this. Where did this come from? Did this come from a vacuum? This is a civilization which lives to this day. Thank you so much Slavonic.