Ali Ataie – Eid is a Sign That Islam is Truth (Eid Al Adha Sermon ’23)
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Today is the day of praising Allah
Today is the day of saying
means that god is great, God is greater.
God is the greatest.
God is greater than anything our minds can
possibly conceive.
God is greater than the universe which he
created out of nothing by his divine command.
For me, personally,
this Eid, Eid Al Adha,
today
is a major sign that this religion is
true.
Is a major sign
for me that this religion is.
This is deen al Haqq, that the Quran
is Haqq, that the prophet
is Haqq. And I'll tell you why. The
dominant culture in the world right now is
a culture that is * bent upon eliminating
anything that has to do with Sayna Ibrahim
alaihi salaam.
They are very openly and very boldly declared
ideological
war on Sinai Ibrahim alaihis salam, our master
Abraham, peace be upon him. For them, Ibrahim
alaihis salam epitomizes
everything that they hate.
He epitomizes
tradition
with a capital t, which they despise.
He epitomizes
patriarchy.
Abraham is our patriarch, but patriarchy is tied
to masculinity,
and masculinity
for them is totally toxic.
He epitomizes
heteronormativity,
which they detest because they obey their base
desires.
And he epitomizes
fear of God and submission to God, which
they repudiate
and reject and even mock. The dominant culture
today is anti Abrahamic
to its core.
And every year, things seem seem to get
more and more intense, more deviant,
more perverted, and just strange.
This is truly a strange new world. Just
in the last 5 years,
things have really changed. It's hard to keep
up with what's going on anymore.
This is because it's based on.
It's based on feelings and desires and impulses.
This is an age of feelings,
the age of Horus.
What happened to reason?
What happened to revelation?
What happened to discipline?
What happened to self control?
It's a strange new world.
And yet
and yet in the face of such anti
Abrahamic culture,
Muslims from all over the world,
once a year, on this day, celebrate Ibrahim
alaihi sallam.
Once a year, we remind ourselves of the
crucial importance of of staying connected specifically
to Ibrahim alaihis salam and our responsibility
to uphold his millah.
No other religion has such a strong affinity
with Abraham. No other religion celebrates a holiday
that is so closely connected to Abraham, not
even Christianity
or Judaism even though Abraham is mentioned and
praised in the bible. It's very interesting. And
so this lack of connection
to Abraham, peace be upon him, is why
these other religions are faltering
badly
in the face of the current culture.
And they're simply not equipped or no longer
equipped to deal with these endgame issues
and hostilities. And we are in the endgame,
my respected brothers and sisters. Make no mistake
about it. You know how they say, if
you can't take the heat, get out of
the kitchen.
Well, if the kitchen is traditional religion
and heat is this pernicious and deviant dominant
culture, then right now in the world, the
heat has turned way up. It's 300 degrees.
And Jews, Christians, Hindus, and Buddhists are flying
out of the kitchen
at record numbers.
Christianity and Judaism in particular
are in major crisis right now.
A big problem is that their leaders consistently
fail to stand up for their principles.
They have betrayed their own congregations.
They were weak when they should have been
strong. They were wishy washy when they should
have been uncompromising.
They made unwarranted concessions in the religion out
of fear. They feared the people when they
should have feared Allah
Allah has a greater right to be feared.
The Bible says in both testaments, the old
and the new, we need to remind
our Christian and Jewish friends.
Both Isaiah and Matthew say, these people draw
near to me with their mouth and honor
me with their lips, but their hearts are
far from me. Teaching as doctrine,
the precepts of men.
They took the religious leaders as divine lords
other than Allah How
they obeyed the creation
in disobedience
to the creator.
You see these other religions? They these are
not the middleah of Ibrahim alaihi salaam.
They're not.
We, the ummah
of the best of creation,
the ummah of the final prophet and messenger,
the ummah of our master, Muhammad sallallahu alaihi
wasallam. We are the Mila of Ibrahim alaihi
sallam.
We are literally the last best hope of
humanity,
the last bus home,
the last line of defense,
and many people are starting to realize this.
This is why multitudes of people in the
west right now are becoming Muslim.
When your common sense, your parental rights, your
religious tradition,
your very civilization
is constantly being undermined at work, at school,
at church, and in the media. You'll either
give up out of despair, out of disillusionment,
or you will seek to preserve your world
view.
And so many people are discovering Islam right
now as being the only real or alternative
of self preservation.
Alhamdulillah.
Recently, we've seen people who are who are
vitriolic,
anti Muslim, polemicist
a few years ago. People who hated Islam.
People who hated Allah and his messenger. We
see them convert to Islam and openly express
their love for Allah and his messenger.
According to the World Health Organization,
there is more mental illness in the anglosphere,
in the English speaking world than in all
other places,
despite the increased wealth and technology.
Why?
Because wealth and technology are not the be
all end all.
Replacing Allah
with tahoots, with false gods only leads to
misery.
When the fear of Allah, when prophetic
virtue cultivation,
when disciplining the lower self is replaced
with atheism
and absolute autonomy and unbridled hedonism.
This only leads to misery. Western society is
seriously breaking down right now. And people have
started looking to us
for answers. Have you been to San Francisco
lately?
Is an absolute dystopia.
Homeless everywhere.
Human waste, needles, garbage covering the streets.
30 to 35% of office buildings abandoned
due to looting and crime. There are signs
everywhere cautioning drivers about criminals who'll smash their
car windows
and steal your property. And yet 100 and
100 of you know what flags
posted everywhere.
This is their culture now. This is their
priority now. San Francisco was never invaded by
a foreign army. It was never colonized. It
was never bombed by invading armies.
It's one of the wealthiest and most technologically
advanced cities in the world.
What happened?
And strive for Allah's sake as you ought
to strive.
He has chosen you and imposed no difficulties
upon you in the religion. It is the
of
your father, Abraham.
It is the creed, the theology,
the tradition of Ibrahim alaihis salam. He called
you Muslims in the past and in this
scripture so that the messenger may be a
witness over you and so that you you
might be witnesses
over humanity.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says in the
We are supposed to be leaders of humanity,
not followers,
not sheep, but shepherds.
Allah
chose us for this. He chose to ban
the Israel before us, but they fell short.
So now this is upon us, and we
accept this honor with humility.
This is now upon us as both a
source of pride and joy, but it's also
a serious responsibility.
The word responsibility
comes from the Latin meaning ability
to
respond.
Oh
oh, you who believe,
respond to Allah and his messenger. When they
call you to that which gives you life,
respond to that which gives you life. What
is that?
What are we responding to that gives us
life? Imam
He said, the hudood of Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala.
The parameters determined by Allah. The commandments and
prohibitions given to us by Allah
The Quran and sunnah of our master, Muhammad
that which leads to everlasting
life in the hereafter.
And staying within these purdun is not difficult.
This is not a difficult religion.
I want to emphasize this point, primarily for
our young people here.
Practically speaking, this is not a difficult religion.
Allah wants ease for you, not difficulty.
We did not reveal this Quran to make
you miserable.
I teach a class at the college called
comparative religion,
comparative theologies.
And when I say the college, you should
know what I'm referring to.
Setuna College, the first Muslim college in the
west, a lighthouse in the bleak ocean of
modern academia.
And I'll tell you this. If you gave
me 2 minutes to explain the essential
theology and morality of a given religion, the
only religion
that could be adequately explained in 2 minutes
or less is Islam.
Why?
Not because this is a religion for unsophisticated
people. Quite the contrary.
Study history. This religion produced some of the
greatest geniuses who ever lived,
theologians, philosophers, poets, scientists, physicians,
historians,
lawyers, political scientists, mathematicians,
etcetera, etcetera.
Knowledge is at the centrality
of this religion.
It's because the guidance
that Allah gave us is clear.
It's coherent.
It's reasonable.
It's logical.
It is in alignment with our nature,
our common sense. This is not a difficult
religion.
Our essential and nonnegotiable
theological and moral commitments
are clear.
So be very cautious about anyone who attempts
to muddy the waters.
Our essentials are clear.
The prophet
warned us about people who
People who come to you with statements that
neither you nor your forefathers have ever heard
these radical hermeneutics.
We know from the plain and obvious meanings
of our sacred text tradition
that Allah is 1, that he has no
partners, that there's nothing like him. We know
from the plain and obvious meanings of our
sacred text tradition that Jesus, peace be upon
him, is a prophet, not god, not the
son of god.
We know from the plain and obvious meanings
of our sacred text tradition
that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala enjoined upon us
prayer, charity, fasting, and pilgrimage that he sent
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam as a
moral exemplar
and a mercy to all the worlds.
We know from the plain and obvious meanings
of our sacred text tradition what the sin
of the people of Lot was, the.
We know. It's plain and obvious. We don't
need a PhD seminar to decipher what the
Quran is saying here. We know from the
plain and obvious meanings of our sacred text
tradition
that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala created male and
female.
It's binary
and that men and women are different. While
they said
yet men and women complement each other. The
prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam said a man's wife
is is half his religion. It's yin and
yang. It's complementary,
non antagonistic.
This is what revelation and reason
can demonstrate. We don't need a $4,000
3 unit university course on intersectional feminism
and gender studies
to take our money and then lie to
us about men and women. We know from
the plain and obvious meanings of our sacred
text tradition
that fornication,
alcohol consumption,
and the killing of children is forbidden and
harmful to society,
and reason can demonstrate this. We have clear
guidance. We have Kitab ul Mubeem, a clarifying
book. We have Albanina.
Who is Albanina?
A
messenger from God who recites pure scriptures.
And we also know from our guidance, from
Allah
that Allah is forgiving and merciful and that
he's ready to accept our Tawba, and he
loves to accept Tovah.
Maybe you haven't been praying for a while.
Maybe you got caught up with all of
this woke nonsense
and didn't said things that go against Allah
and his messenger.
Maybe you've secretly left the.
Make and
come back as long as you're alive. It
isn't too late.
You're still alive.
Come back to Allah
Allah is the Tawab, the one who is
constantly accepting our Tawba, our repentance.
Come back and have hope in Allah that
he will enable you to seal your speech
with.
Muhammad Your end matters more than your beginning
or middle. Allah
says in Hadith puts
Oh, son of Adam, as long as you
call upon me and have hope in me,
I will forgive you despite whatever may have
occurred from you. And I do not mind.
This is
Allah.
What if my teacher said that one of
these Muslim celebrity athletes
approached a sheikh,
and we know that shuhrah is a tribulation.
Fame is a tribulation.
The ulama do not wish to be famous.
Qurp shuhrah,
love of fame, is one of the major
diseases of the heart. This is a disease
of the heart that very learned people struggle
with, Let alone teenagers on social media. Many
of whom harm themselves by doing these humiliating
TikTok challenges
just to become famous.
And that stuff stays on the Internet for
decades decades.
So this famous Muslim athlete, he said to
the Sheikh, said, yeah, sheikh, I keep falling
into this one sin.
I make but I keep falling back into
this sin, then I make
and the cycle continues on and on. What
do I do? The sheikh looked at him
and said, it's to live.
Continue.
Continue.
Continue to make with
sincerity.
And Allah
will give him to
eventually leave the sin.
Oh, my servants who have transgressed against their
own souls.
Never despair of the mercy of Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala. Allah forgives all sins. He's forgiven
and merciful.
The prophet,
salam,
said,
Once a man was walking in the street,
and he found a thorny branch
of a tree on the street, and he
removed it. Allah thanked him for that and
forgave his
sins. Allah
loves to forgive.
He's looking to forgive.
You might deem some act insignificant, but it
is weighty with Allah
He's looking at intention. He's looking at sincerity.
You don't have to go from a non
practicing Muslim to Sheikh Al Islam overnight.
Start with establishing
the prayer
5 times a day, and do these little
things with good intentions.
Smile at people. There was a guy who
committed suicide. He tried to commit suicide. He
jumped up the Golden Gate Bridge.
He said he he he survived. He said
he was on the bus. He said if
just one person looked at me and smiled
at me, I wouldn't have gone through with
it. If one person looked at me and
smiled at me, if one person looked at
me and said, hey. How are you doing?
I wouldn't have done with it. Smile at
people. Open doors for people. Be kind to
animals.
When you go to a restaurant, clean up
after yourself.
Make it a little easier for the worker
there who's barely making enough money to feed
his family. These are things that Allah values.
There's a saying attributed to Isa alaihi salaam.
He said, which of you, if you had
100 sheep and lost one of them, would
it leave the 99 in the wilderness and
go after the one that was lost until
he found it? And when you find it,
you carry it on your shoulders rejoicing.
The prophet
made the same point, but more effectively,
more vividly,
more dramatically.
He said,
verily Allah is more pleased with the repentance
of his slave than a man who lost
his camel in the in the in a
waterless desert,
which was carrying his provisions of food and
drink.
He, having lost all hope,
lies down in the shade,
presumably to die.
Then all of a sudden, he finds the
camel standing before him. He takes hold of
its reins, and then out of boundless joy,
he blurts out, Allah
Oh, Allah, you are my slave, and I
am your lord. The prophet said,
He committed a mistake with his tongue out
of extreme joy.
Allah is more pleased
with his servants, Tawba, than that man
is at that moment.
You see, the worst thing you can do
is to disconnect yourself from Allah
or to justify your sin to yourself in
defiance of Allah.
The state of youth, the state of being
young can lead to a state to a
to a type of delusion.
Young people often think that they're indestructible.
But I promise you one day, a day
that will come sooner than you think,
you will notice your body starting to break
down,
gray in your hair, wrinkles on your face,
your memory starting to slip
if you even get that far.
Just recently, we had 2 young Muslim brothers
in their twenties return to Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala. May Allah forgive them and have mercy
upon them
and give patience to their parents and siblings.
May Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala give them the
highest ranks
and may Allah
give them the company of the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam. Things like this happen. They
happen all the time. This is the nature
of the dunya. It happened to the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam on on multiple occasions,
and he was the best of creation.
He's the beloved of Allah. When his son
Ibrahim died, Raniyahahu anhu, the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasalam was weeping.
This is human nature.
You were crying, oh messenger of god.
Oh, son of, he said, this is mercy,
and indeed the eye weeks, and the heart
feels,
grief.
But we don't say, accept what pleases our
lord.
So know the nature of the dunya. These
are tests. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says, do
you think you're just going to enter paradise
without being tested in the Allah
Allah has purchased from the believers
their lives and their wealth in exchange for
paradise.
So let's make a commitment right now that
we're going to live theocentric
lives,
lives centered around God.
As long as you are following Allah and
his messenger,
do not allow yourselves to be agitated by
those who are steeped in sin. Because I'll
tell you this, and you know this,
this whole idea of living a phiocentric life,
a life centered around God, a life of
taqwa, this whole idea has become an object
of mockery
in our modern culture.
The idea of believing in the divine lawgiver,
a being greater than ourselves is the object
of mockery in our modern world.
So how are we going to respond? What's
our istijaba?
Are we going to cower and shame and
water down the religion
because of how human beings might perceive us?
Or are we going to put Oman as
messenger first?
To use a boxing analogy,
are we going to respond to the bell
of the final round, make isti jaba and
keep striving or jahigu filahi haka jihadi? Or
are we going to throw in the towel,
give up and lose hope? Or are we
going to try to change the rules of
the game in the final round? Whatever choice
we make, we should know that Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala does not need any of us.
Allah is self sufficient whereas you human beings
are impoverished.
And if you turn away, he will replace
you with another people, and they will not
be like you. This is the sunnah of
Allah and his creation.
Please Allah, and humanity will follow.
If we transgress the purdood of Allah, in
order to please humanity,
we will compromise.
If we compromise
our non negotiable
theological and moral commitments,
or if we lie to ourselves and radically
reinterpret
these non negotiable
that are
then how can we expect tawfeeq
from Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
Please Allah and human beings will follow and
if human beings don't follow then Allah.
Allah suffices us.
We don't say anything except that pleases our
Lord. You don't have to march in a
rally. You don't have to support some politician.
You don't have to affirm someone's self delusion.
You don't have to scream and stomp your
feet at some protest. You don't have to
declare yourself an ally to some deviant social
movement. You don't have to play their language
games.
You don't have to do any of these
things.
Don't let the pressure get to you.
And he'll give you a way out, an
exit strategy.
So what do we have to do?
Finishing the ayah.
To establish the prayer and give charity
and cling to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
He is your master.
What an excellent master. What an excellent helper.
This is the millah of Ibrahim alaihi salaam,
the last bastion of hope. How many times
we find in the Quran Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala commanding us to adhere to the midlah
of Ibrahim alayhi salaam? How many times? Why
is that? Why such emphasis?
Because this is true guidance.
This is what we need to survive
in these latter days. The Quran is a
transhistorical
text. It's good for all time.
It stays relevant. All on noon that attacks
upon the
would intensify
as we move closer to the
Say Allah speaks the truth.
Follow the middle of Ibrahim alaihi salaam. He
was not from the idolaters.
Nam, son of Allah.
Who turns away from the creed of Abraham,
except he makes a fool out of himself?
Amazing.
Do we not see this today?
Do we not see this today? Listen to
the speech of these postmodern people who reject
traditional Abrahamic theology
and morality,
who reject God and revelation and prophecy and
time tested tradition.
Just listen to their words,
contradictions,
logical fallacies,
incoherence,
emotional incontinence,
and just mind boggling
foolishness,
the kind of foolishness where you're left scratching
your head. You're wondering, is this person serious
right now? Is he serious?
Look at their appearances. Look at the view
to their bodies.
What kind of foolishness?
What happened to humanity?
What happened to human dignity? Look at the
lifestyles that they advocate.
Unhealthy,
pathogenic,
shameless,
disorder.
We are Muslim. We have clear guidance.
They make absolute fools out of themselves, and
they call us fools.
And said to them, do not spread corruption
in the land. They say we're just reformers.
Indeed it is they who are corruptors,
but they failed to proceed.
And when they are told, believe as others
believe, they say, will we believe as the
fools believe?
Indeed, the Zeihu are fools, but they don't
know.
And when they meet the believers,
when they meet the Muslims, they say, we
believe.
You know? We're allies.
We're on the same team.
Coexistence,
tolerance,
kindness.
Did Ibrahim, alaihis salam
ally himself to deviance?
Did Luke, alaihis salam? What about the wife
of Luke?
These stories are here for a reason.
But when they're alone with their evil associates,
they say, we are definitely with you. We
were just mocking with those believers.
We're just using them
to get power, status,
sympathy, special privileges. We don't really care about
them.
Allah will throw their mockery back at them,
leaving them to continue wandering blindly in their
in their defiance.
Allah says about Ibrahim alaihis salam
that Ibrahim alaihis salam came to his lord
with a sound heart. This is the spiritual
heart, the spiritual qalib, which is the seed
of emotion and intelligence. In other words, the
mind. Ibrahim alayhis salam approached his lord with
a sound mind. The stories in the Quran
of Ibrahim, alayhis salam, are not simply there
for entertainment.
They have deeply profound significance.
They're intended to build our minds, to make
us formidable intellectual warriors like Ibrahim Alaihi Salam.
I'm out of time.
The substitution of Aram for
Ibrahim's
son,
serves as the basis for the ritual of
the slaughtering
of the of
the Qurbani.
It's required as a final right of the
Hajj. So we have to do this as
well or at least have someone,
do this on our behalf. Also, it is
Wajib in the Hanafi School to continue to
at
least once after every.
Okay? Up up to and including salat al
Asr on 13th Dur Hijjah. So that's, Saturday,
I believe,
July 1st.