Ali Ataie – How Islam Views the Person of Jesus Christ (PBUH)
AI: Summary ©
The importance of interfaith dialogue and common language use in the church context is discussed, along with the significance of names of prophets and common language used. They also touch on Greek and Arabic language variations, including the use of "mon temp mal" in Arabic and the use of "AP" in Greek. The holy spirit and the potential threat it could pose to the world are also emphasized. The speakers stress the importance of honoring the father, not giving up standards, protecting one's identity, and avoiding false assumptions. They also discuss the use of weak hadiths and conservative think tanks to support Islam's movement, as well as belief in multiple hadiths and the holy spirit.
AI: Summary ©
Topic is and
Islam and Christianity.
It's a good topic. It's important for us
to understand,
especially in our given our context.
I wanna begin by telling you a true
story.
I was, used to have fellowship with several
churches in the Bay Area. We go and,
you know, we have interfaith dialogue.
And I was at a church one time.
It was a Methodist church. And usually, the
United Methodist Church is very welcoming of Muslims,
and they really enjoy, you know, learning about
different perspectives and things like that. Anyway, I
was in the church. And,
after the after the, event, I walked out
to the parking lot and a group of
really hardcore
evangelical Christians
ambushed me.
And they were asking me, what are you
doing in a church?
You're a Muslim. What are you doing here?
And I said, well, we're here to have
interfaith dialogue. And there's one lady in particular
who had a Bible with her. She was
very distraught that we were in the church.
And,
she started saying things like, your prophet went
into Europe
and killed all of the Europeans.
I
say, okay. I don't I don't know who
you think my prophet is.
But the prophet
he did not leave,
the the Hejaz, the Arabian Peninsula in the
23 years of his ministry.
Right? Didn't leave the Hejaz.
And she said, no. It's well documented. I
said, I don't know who documents that. I've
never heard of that. And then she quoted
a verse from the Quran,
out of context.
Right?
You
know, you know,
kill the
unbelievers wherever you find them. She said, look
at this verse.
And she tried to convince me that Muslims,
believe in unmitigated
perpetual
warfare against unbelievers.
So that's what Muslims believe. And I said,
you actually believe that's what I believe?
And she said, yes. And I said, then
it would be my duty right now to
kill you.
Wouldn't that
be? We're not killing you. So obviously, that
belief, that's not
what Muslims believe.
And then I I said to her, you
know, you have to look at the context.
There's a whole science.
You know? When you study the Quran, right,
there's Quran.
You have to know.
You have to know.
You have to know.
You have to know these different types of
sciences. So,
this is a science that relates to the
occasions of the revelations.
What are the context of these?
Right? Very, very important.
So I said that verse is contextualized.
It's very important to understand the context.
And she said, no. No. No. Muslims have
to apply this. And I said, well, to
give her,
an example of why it's important to look
at the context,
I said, you know, in the gospel of
Luke chapter 19 verse 27,
Jesus says,
those enemies of mine that do not accept
me as their king,
Bring them hither and slay them before me.
So I read this translate I read this
verse and she didn't understand it because it's
kind of strange in English.
So I quoted to her the Berenstain Bear
translation.
Right? So they have a kid's translation,
a a children's translation of the bible called
the Berenstain Bears translation. It's very easy to
so this is what it says in the
Berenstain Bear Translation.
Those who do not accept me as their
king
cut their throats in my very presence.
And then she immediately said,
that verse is not in my Bible.
I expected her to say, well, there's a
context.
Right? And then I would have made my
point exactly
every verse in scripture
has a context.
But she said, that's not in the Bible.
There's no way that verse was in the
Bible.
So can I say I said can I
see your bible?
She gave it to me and I showed
her the verse.
And she looked at it
and she closed it and she looked at
the cover as if, you know, it it
was a different book or it was her
own bible.
And then she looked at me and she
said,
I know who you are, Satan.
I just thought I'd open with that story.
I have a lot of stories, by the
way. Maybe I'll down down the line, I'll
tell you more stories. Very interesting stories.
So,
anyway, she proceeded to do an exorcism on
me. She thought I was possessed by a
demon, and she's speaking in tongues and things
like that. It's happened quite often. It's quite
normal now.
Anyway,
we're talking about
First thing we wanna talk about are names.
It's important to understand,
the names of prophets, the of the
because in the names of the prophets, there's
certain,
certain secrets in the names.
Right? So the name of the prophet is
Muhammad
This is a passive participle. Right?
And it's on the second verbal form, which
denotes intensity or repetition and action.
Right? So one who is
always and intensively
praised. Right? That's his name. It's really interesting.
And you can write volumes on, you know,
the name of the prophet.
But one of the things that the ulama
mentioned is
right now, somebody
is shouting
That's happening right now.
It's actually happening
every second of every day, 247
around the clock as long as there are
believers on the earth.
Somebody is shouting the praises of the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
Right? As Allah
says in the Quran, out of consolation to
his prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
There was a wizard. There was a burden
on the back of the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam. And
in Arabic means this,
to crack.
So this is majaz. This is figurative. If
I put bricks on this table,
the the legs are gonna start buckling and
they'll crack. So the back so it's a
very explicit,
analogy, very graphic analogy.
The back of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam,
it's it's like it's breaking because of the
wizard, the burden of the dawah, of the
revelation, that he is the universal messenger.
Right? And Allah says to him, we removed
that from you
and raised high your remembrance.
So there's many things we can say about
the name of the prophet
The name, Ishmael,
right, which is pronounced Ishmael
in Hebrew. Does anyone know what this name
means?
Sometimes you read these,
you know, really anti Muslim polemesis writings that
are done by evangelical Christians, and they say,
oh, Ishmael means something terrible.
Right? Because they're racist, and they like the
Arabs, and they wanna justify a war and
things like that. But what does the name
actually mean?
Right? Ishmael Ishmael.
In Hebrew is
a is a present tense verb.
Right? Means to hear. He hears.
Who hears?
In Hebrew means God,
like.
God will hear. This is the this is
the meaning of his name.
Ishmael.
Ishmael,
God will hear.
Right? Very interesting in the Quran, we're told
that Ibrahim Alaihi Salam and Ishmael Alaihi Salam
were at the Kaaba, and they prayed
Right? Oh, Allah, raise up a messenger amongst
them from them.
And this dua was answered. The prophet said,
I am the fulfillment of my father Abraham,
and Ismael was there at the time.
And the glad tidings,
that's the meaning of gospel and the gospel
of Asa Alaihi Salam. What is the gospel?
The coming of the prophet
So Ishmael,
Ishmael,
anytime you see the word e l
either as a,
as a suffix,
or in the name somewhere.
Right?
That's called the theophoric name.
A theophoric name means the name of God
is embedded in the name. This is why
the prophet said, the best names are theophoric,
like Abdullah.
Right? You have the Abdu prefix and then
Allah, Abdul Rahman.
Right? Abdul Latif. These are the best types
of names.
So, like,
the name,
Gabriel. Right? Gabriel.
Right? Jibril.
Gavriel in Hebrew.
The name of God is in that name.
It means the power of God.
Right? Or like Elijah or Elroy
or
L Ron Hubbard.
I'm just just just kidding about that one.
I apologize to the Scientologists in the room.
The theophoric names.
Right? So if you look at a name,
Ishaq, another example.
What does the name Ishaq mean?
In Hebrew, it's pronounced it's very difficult.
Excuse me.
Hebrews are guttural, even much more than Arabic.
Right?
The the meaning in Hebrew means laughter.
It's related to the verb
That's how you would say it literally.
Why is his name laughter?
We're told in Surah Hud and also in
the Torah.
We're told that when angels came to the
house of Ibrahim Alaihi Salam, they said to
to Sarah, you're going to have a son.
She says,
Right? She laughed.
I'm an old woman, and I'm Jews.
This is my husband. He's an old man.
This is strange.
Right? So they named their son
Laughter.
So the names of prophets
are very, very interesting
that there's something that happened before their birth
or something will happen during their lives or
something that's going to happen at the end
of their lives,
right, that will determine their names.
The name Moses is Moshe in Hebrew,
which means to draw someone out of something,
something extracted.
Why does his name mean extracted?
Who
knows?
Very good. He was extracted from the the
Nile, the Nahru Nile, the Nile River.
So they call his name Moshe. Now the
name, Isa Alaihi Salam,
his actual name,
according to most scholars
of the New Testament,
His actual name, because
did not speak English, obviously.
There was a governor of Texas. This is
a true story.
You know? God bless our politicians.
The first female governor of Texas,
her name was Miriam Ferguson.
Right? This is, I don't know, maybe a
100 years ago or something.
She there was a court hearing. They were
going to determine whether they're going to teach
Texas school children Spanish.
Right?
And she was against it. So she picked
up the King James version of the Bible,
and she said, if English was good enough
for Christ,
it's good enough for our children.
Yes.
No. Didn't speak English.
You know?
Probably knew a little bit of Koine Greek.
The New Testament is in Greek, and that's
an immediate disadvantage for the Christian
because
probably did not speak Greek either.
But it's interesting when you look at certain
things in the Greek compared to the English.
Like in Mark 10/18,
this is the gospel of Mark. Right? And
we can quote these things. You know, the
prophet said
quote the stories of the Israelites, and there's
nothing wrong with that As long as they
they don't contradict our. So Imam Ghazali, for
example, Imam Tabari, they'll quote from the bible.
It's sort of like FYI.
If they're writing research papers today, they probably
put it in footnotes. But someone, ibn Kathiri,
says, don't don't quote it. It's not necessary.
So a difference of opinion. Anyway,
Mark 10 18, a scribe comes to Jesus
and says, good master,
what must I do to gain eternal life?
In the English,
he in in the English, his response is,
why do you call me good? There is
no one good but 1. That is God.
Right? Isn't it very clear that he's not
god?
He doesn't even accept the title of good.
But in the Greek, it's even more emphatic.
In the Greek, he
says.
So what he does is he brings the
object
to the front of the sentence. This is
called
in Arabic, if you want to emphasize something.
Right? If you wanna say, I hit Zayd,
which you wanna emphasize. Zayd,
I hit. You bring the
forward. This is what happens in the Greek.
So, basically, he's saying, me?
Your calling good?
There's no one good but one, and that
is God.
Right?
Very interesting.
Anyway,
you probably know a little bit of Koine
Greek, probably knew some Latin, maybe. The lingua
franca of the Roman Empire at the time
in Palestine was Koine Greek, common Greek,
right, which is very different than classical Greek.
You guys heard of Nietzsche?
He quit one time. He's a big atheist,
but he said he said it was so
nice of God to reveal
his word in such a remedial form of
Greek
for our comprehension.
Because I I studied Greek for 2 years,
and then I studied Greek, biblical Greek. And
then I studied,
the Palatetan by Plato. And I said, woah.
The whole new ballgame. Anyway,
what he spoke was a language called Syriac.
Syriac. That's the language of Syriac
is also known as late Aramaic.
Okay? It's a kind of a late dialect
of a language called Aramaic. Aramaic was a
language of the Persian Empire.
The Jews were in captivity in Babylon.
Right? They were taken there by a man
named Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon.
538,
Babylon was conquered by the Persians, king Cyrus.
Right?
Iran number 1. Just joking.
I'm from Iran, so
I I can pick on the Iranians a
little bit.
So, anyway, the the the Persians conquered the
Babylonians,
and then,
the Jews, when they returned to Palestine, and
many of them did not return. Many of
them stayed in in
in Babylon, which is moderate Iraq. Some of
them actually went into the Hejaz, into.
Right? And because there's prophecy that a prophet
will come there. Right? The ones that did
return in the Palestine,
Hebrews ceased to be the spoken language. They
would pray in Hebrew. It was a liturgical
language now. But the spoken language was called
Aramaic,
right, which is still a Semitic language. It
was related to Hebrew. It's related to Arabic.
Right? We call them Semitic languages after
Sam, the son of Noah. So according to
the Muslim of Ahmed, there's a Hadith where
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, he said that
Nuh alaihi wasallam had 3 sons that survived
the flood. They're called Sam, Ham, and Japeth.
And Sam, he went to the Middle East.
So the
the Middle Easterners are his,
progeny.
Right? So
the Semitic languages.
They're related
in that sense. So he spoke Syriac. So
how do you say the name of in
Syria? It's pronounced
Yeshua
Hamashiach.
Jesus the Christ.
Yeshua
Hamashiach.
What does this name mean?
You know what's interesting?
In
Hebrew and Aramaic and Arabic are like we
said, it's very closely related.
Sometimes, the same verbal
scale applies across all three languages.
So
in Arabic,
a first form passive participle
has an oh sound in the middle of
it. Yeah.
Do you hear that? Oh, the wow.
That means it's passive participle. That means an
action is done to it.
Right? So the
is the active participle, the one writing.
The is that which is being written.
Right?
So this name, Yeshu'a,
it also has the oud. It's called
in Hebrew.
So this is a passive participle. The name
of Jesus is passive.
The root here is which
means to save.
So how do you say this name
as a passive participle knowing that the root
means to save?
Did go too fast?
The active would be savior.
The passive is
the saved.
The the one saved.
This is what his name means literally.
The one who was saved.
Why is he called that?
Do you know what the Quran says?
It
says,
It says they did not kill nor crucify
Isa alaihi salaam.
No. They did not kill nor crucify him.
But it was made to appear so unto
his enemies. For a surety, they killed him
not. His name literally means the one saved
by god.
That's what his name literally means.
Very, very interesting.
You know, there's a a book in the
Old Testament. The Old Testament is called Tanakh
in Hebrew.
It's called the Psalms. And some Muslim
they say this is the
the. But there's an interesting
verse in the Psalms.
It's chapter 20 verse 6 of the Psalms.
Psalms 26.
Right? This is what it says, and this
is what it sounds like in Hebrew. It
says
It says David writes,
It says,
I know that god will save his messiah.
God will save his messiah.
He shall hear him from his holy heaven
with the saving power of his right hand.
Right? So this idea
that
Isa alaihissalam, that the messiah wasn't crucified,
this is not a Muslim invention.
This has precedent in prophecy in the Old
Testament.
Right?
This idea that Jesus wasn't crucified was not
invented by the Quran. It also has historical
precedent.
You guys hear of the Nag Hammadi library?
There's a discovery of a library in 1947.
It's called Nag Hammadi. It's in Egypt. You
haven't heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls?
That was discovered 1947.
That was 2 years after Nag Hammadi. So
Nag Hammadi, 1945,
Dead Sea Scrolls, 1947.
What's interesting about the Dead Sea Scrolls is
they were found in 1947,
and full disclosure of the scrolls was not
given until
1991.
The only 2 organizations
that had permission to look at the scrolls
were the state of Israel
and the Roman Catholic church, the Vatican.
No independent scholars for 40 years.
And we know the Vatican has the Vatican
vault has 52 miles of shelf space.
So
down on the vault.
But what they've
disclosed is very interesting, very clear descriptions of
the prophet
in the Dead Sea Scrolls. We can talk
about that later if you'd like. But this
is a different topic, the prophet,
in the Hebrew Bible. I'll give you one
example of this, and then we'll return to
the library.
So Allah says
that,
Those who follow the messenger, the unletered prophet.
Right? Ummi has different meanings in Arabic.
Ummi can mean unlettered in the sense that
one cannot read nor write.
Right? Or it can mean someone can read
or write
but chooses not to.
So unlettered or uneducated.
Illiterate is, you know, sort of a derogatory.
I would use the word unlettered. No formal
education.
Right? This is one of the meanings. Another
meaning of Ummi is motherly
because Ummi means mother.
Right? Like Zaydib Nuharitha,
who the prophet
through Tabani, which has been abrogated. He said
he went to the Kaaba. He says Zayd
ibnu. Zayd ibn Muhammad.
Right? And that's been abrogated.
But
the father of Zaid ibn Haritha named Haritha
came into Mecca with his uncle Kab,
and they saw Zaid. And they said, Zaid,
come home. I'm your father.
And Zayd said talk to him, and he
pointed to the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam. And
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam said put your
money away.
Ask Zayd. If he wants to go with
you, he can go.
And his father said to Zayd,
come. Let's go home. And Zayd said, I'm
not going to leave this man. He is
my father and my mother.
He said about the prophet
and his father said, you choose slavery over
freedom. You choose this man over your own
father. He said, I've seen things from this
man that I can't even explain.
He's my father and my mother. Because the
prophet
not only did he have those jalali domestic
qualities,
but he had those jalali beautiful qualities that
are predominantly found in women. He was very
merciful, forbearing. He would weep. He did not
raise his voice
describes
him. He would not raise his voice in
the marketplace. He wouldn't speak all that much.
Very tassy turn in speech. There's some people
just like me. The prophet would barely speak.
Right? But when he spoke, he spoke the
truth, and he always spoke the truth.
Like, Amr ibn,
Amr ibn, Abdullah ibn Amr Al As who
was writing some of the hadith of the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam. He said,
when you're angry, shall I write it down?
He
said, So the one by the one who
sent me in truth, nothing comes out of
this except the truth, and he pointed to
his mouth. Everything the prophet
said is a form of inspiration.
Not
So if you know a little bit Arabic,
if it's
it could mean that when he's reciting the
Quran, he's not speaking from his caprice. But
with the
strong negation
means he never speaks from his caprice.
Whatever he says is
is
is inspiration.
I forgot my train of thought. Where's
it going with this?
Yes. The Dead Sea Scrolls. I wanna give
you one example of of, how the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam is mentioned
in the bible. Okay?
So that's what the Quran says.
Oh, another meaning of umni is gentile.
What is a gentile? A non Jew.
In in Hebrew you call them the Goyim.
Right? How do you say
gentile in Arabic?
Right.
As the Quran says. Right. So could mean
the Gentile prophet,
very interestingly.
And it says that they'll find him mentioned
in the Torah and in the gospel.
Now we know the story, for example, of
the laylatul Qadr or the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam when he was 40 years old. He
was in the
the mountain called, Jabal An Nur.
And Jibril alaihis salam, he comes into the
cave in the form of a man and
he says in and the prophet says.
Right? So Isaiah 2912 says, the book is
given to one who does not know letters.
And it is said to him
and he shall answer
If he should it was it shall be
said to him,
and in Hebrew and Iqra and Arabic are
exact cognates. This is Isaiah 2912.
And he shall answer, I know with no
letters.
In Hebrew. It's a perfect prophecy
of the prophet.
Anyway, now 1945,
2 years earlier,
the Nag Hammadi library was discovered,
and they found gospels
that clearly explicitly
denied
that Isa alaihi salam was crucified.
Clearly denied it.
Right? So before 1945,
if a Muslim and a Christian would engage
in a discourse,
the Muslim would say, why don't you believe
that Jesus was crucified?
And the Muslim would say, well, it says
in the Quran,
And then the Christian would say, well, who
cares what the Quran says? Matthew, Mark, and
Luke that were written in the 1st century,
all of them say he was crucified. Why
do you give precedence over something written 500
years later in a foreign language?
And the Muslim goes, well, I believe in
the Quran.
I believe in the revelation of God, and
I believe that the prophet
is.
Right?
But that's his only argument basically.
But now we know
there are other gospels
that explicitly denied the crucifixion.
Right? There's a book that they found at
Nag Hammadi. It's called this the the second
treatise of the great Seth. That's what they
called it. The second treatise of the great
Seth, which states very clearly that a man
named Simon
was crucified instead of Jesus.
Very clearly.
And, there was a large group of Christians
in the 1st century called the Basilideans.
The Basilideans who denied that Esa
was crucified.
K. Who is Simon? So if you read
Matthew, Mark, and Luke in the new testament,
it says that when they were going to
crucify Jesus,
the Romans pulled a man out of the
crowd named Simon
and they compelled him to bear the cross.
Many Christians in the 1st century believed this
man was crucified instead of Jesus.
So in the gospel of John, the last
of the 4 gospels in the new testament,
which is written around a100 of the common
era, John says very clearly, Jesus bore his
own cross. He doesn't even mention that episode
of Simon because he knows at his time,
there were Christians who
categorically
denied that Esa alaihi salam
was crucified. A crucified messiah
is an oxymoron.
You know what an oxymoron is?
They say 4 sided triangle.
Can you draw a 4 sided triangle? You
know, like the atheist will say, if god
is all powerful, can he create a stone
that's so big he can't even carry it?
And then someone goes, oh, no.
I don't know how to answer
because the very question is faulty.
You know who Stephen Hawking is?
Very smart man. Right?
In many areas, at least in science.
Stephen Hawking came into this masjid and I
said, do you think you're a smart man?
He said, yes. Probably. I don't know. I
said, okay, Steven. I want you to draw
a 4 sided triangle.
He said, well, I can't do that.
You're not the smartest man in the world.
You can't do something simple as drawing a
4 sided triangle.
So this question, can Allah do something? Can
he can he make a boulder so big
that he can't carry it? This question is
faulty. It's saying, can Allah be so strong
that he's weak?
Can Allah be so strong that he's weak?
That doesn't make any sense. It's like I
asked you for example.
In which jungle does a great white shark
swim? Can you answer this question? No. The
question is faulty. There's no answer to this,
oh, you don't know something.
The question is faulty. Right? It's against the
nature
of Allah
to have any type of weakness.
This is why we reject
Christian theology.
Christian theology to us is.
It's inconceivable
because God cannot become a man.
Right? Because men are limited by nature.
I'm limited right now. I have a 5
foot 11 inch frame, but in shoes I'm
6 feet tall.
So 6 feet in t in heels. Right?
But I'm limited. I can't touch those books
over there,
right, unless I have the force. This is
the imperial empire in inland empire.
Maybe if I use the force,
I might be able to touch it. Right?
But I can't. I'm limited. I can't fly
around this room unless
unless Allah gives me the ability to do
that. And he wants to break the,
right, natural law. And he can certainly do
that because he has.
He's omnipotence.
Right? But if I if I don't eat
for a few days, I'm dead.
If I don't drink water for a few
days, I'm dead.
If I go outside over here and walk
around
with no clothes on for after a few
days, I'll be in jail or dead.
Right?
If the earth would just tilt a little
bit, we're all dead. If the moon will
go back a little bit, we're dead. If
the sun would go come up a little
bit, we're all dead.
We're dependent on so many things. If there's
no gravity, we're dead.
Right?
So Allah
is Samad.
Allah what is? This is called the It's
one of the fancy words of the,
the the scholars like to use to confuse
the masses.
What that means is this is the only
occurrence of the word in the entire Quran.
And Ikhlas has different names. One of the
names of Ikhlas is a or There's
a hadith that says There's
There's weakness in the hadith, but many of
the they quote it. It says that the
7 heavens and the 7 earths are sustained
by
which means what? According to the Unama, as
long as there's 1 person on earth saying
that god is,
the heavens and the earth remain intact.
The heavens and the earth remain intact.
Very interesting. So Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala what
does mean?
Means that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
So he is not in need of anything,
but everything needs him. This is the meaning
of Samad.
Right? So I can't be Allah. You can't
be Allah because we need things. We're in
need.
Right? We
are. We are poverty stricken.
And Allah is. Allah is independent. He is
the wealthy and the rich. Right? So even
someone who claims to be god, just by
making the claim is disqualified.
Because, you know, we have in our theology
what what are known as sifat al ma'ani
or qualitative attributes of God.
In other words, these are qualities that God
must have
in order to be qualified or described as
God.
One of them is he must be omniscient.
He must know everything.
So, for example, if I say I'm God,
immediately I'm disqualified because you know I'm a
human being and I'm limited. But if you
wanna press the issue further and you say,
okay. You're God. I say, yes. You say,
okay. What did you have for lunch 48
days ago?
I
don't remember.
You can't be God. What is 1,000,002
minus
566
times
245?
I don't know. I need my calculator. Okay.
You're not god. Why? Because I have a
weakness in knowledge.
Right?
There's a passage in the gospel of Matthew
2436
where Isa alaihi salam comes to
where Isa alaihi salam says, of that day,
the day of judgment,
nobody knows.
Not the angels,
not even the sun referring to himself, and
this doesn't mean son in the literal sense.
Right? This means a servant of God. This
was this idea was corrupted by trinitarian Christians,
but only the father. He doesn't know the.
He admits it in the gospel of Matthew
2436.
And later versions of Matthew, they removed that
little statement because they found it quite disturbing
that Jesus doesn't know something. Because if Jesus
doesn't know something, he's automatically
disqualified
as being god. You cannot qualify him as
god anymore.
You ever heard of CS Lewis?
CS Lewis was a Christian philosopher,
Oxford or Cambridge. Martin Lings was one of
his colleagues or students. JRR Tolkien also
who wrote the,
what is it, The Hobbit?
The Lord of the Rings.
I don't know. Something like that. I haven't
seen those movies. So,
yeah. Right. Anyway,
so CS Lewis says
and this is in in Aristotelian logic, this
is called the principle of the excluded middle.
He's given you multiple choice and he says
you have to choose one of these. Jesus
was either a liar
or he's a lunatic
or he's Lord.
Right?
Why is he saying this? Because for CS
Lewis, very clearly, Jesus claims divinity in the
New Testament. He claims to be God.
You can only use this type of argument
if your premise has been demonstrated that Jesus
does, in fact, claim to be God. But
nowhere in the New Testament,
nowhere in the new testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke,
or John, nowhere does Isa claim
that he is god. Nowhere does he say,
I am god. Nowhere does he say, worship
me. Nowhere.
Right?
So he says,
Jesus claims to be God. So he's either
lying
or he's crazy.
Right? He's only a crazy man. Because you
go to UC Berkeley. I'm from Berkeley area.
There are 2 Jesuses on campus.
There's 1 on the south end and 1
on the north end. Looked like Jesus and
everything. One of them has a a sign
around his neck, it says Yeshua in Aramaic.
And he's holding a cane, he's got the
beard,
and he says I am Jesus and I
said you're Jesus? There's a guy over there
saying he's Jesus and he goes he's a
liar.
I am the Christ.
Okay.
So or he says, or he's lord.
Right?
But we're saying is, Isa alaihis salaam would
never claim to be God ever
because that would immediately
disqualify him
as being a prophet. And this is what
the Jews believe also. This is by and
large why Jews did not believe in Isa
alaihi salaam after the first generation, because they
cannot possibly
accept the Christian message that a man is
God.
They can't accept that. That goes against the
very fabric of their theology.
Right? So he said God is
and We mentioned this briefly in
the.
What does mean? If I say, I am
one man.
Right?
Does that mean
that you're not one man? No.
You are one man. You are one man.
So if I use the word, this means
one numerically,
but there could be and and and Araba
and Khamsa. Right? In other words, when I
say
I'm not,
limiting the genus, the species of man to
myself. There are other men.
So Allah is
meaning he's one entity, one person, not 3
persons
as the trinitarians
believe.
He's one person, but Allah is also
If I say,
what does this mean? This means I've limited
the genus of Rojul to myself. There's no
other man in existence.
There's I think there was a movie
where the last man on earth or something,
and I heard about it. I haven't seen
it, though.
So that man can say
Right? There's no other man in existence.
But somebody could say, oh, but there's women,
and women are comparable to men.
Right? They're similar to men. There are things
that women excel at that men do not.
Women are better,
at multitasking and they're better in linguistics. This
is politically incorrect science, by the way.
Right? Like, men have better hand eye coordination,
but women have better linguistic skill. This is,
you know, done by Harvard University.
Right? But so they're they're comparable. They excel
at things, and men are sometimes better, and
women are sometimes better.
Right?
And even if there were no women, somebody
could make the argument, but chimpanzees are similar
to man. 98% of the DNA is similar.
Right? But with Allah
there's nothing even remotely close
to Allah
He's one of a kind. He's one person
and one of a kind.
There's nothing like the likes of god. There's
nothing like
There's nothing even close to the closeness of
god.
There's there's emphasis here.
Right?
So it's interesting. In the Old Testament, in
the Hebrew Bible, in the book of Hosea,
it says very clearly chapter 11 verse 9.
It says in Hebrew,
indeed
I am
God and not a man.
These are mutually exclusive.
God and man are mutually exclusive,
right?
In other words, anyone who claims to be
God, who's a man, cannot possibly be god.
So
Islam, Yani,
it accepts
Isa
as al Masihr,
but it corrects the Christology.
It corrects belief about him. We believe as
Muslims
is
the Messiah. He is the
the anointed one of Bani Israel.
What's interesting also
is that
if you read the Quran, there's a subtlety
in the Quran. Right? And this is, you
know, this is open to challenge, but this
is something interesting the Ullama mentioned. Is they
say that Isa alaihi salaam
that Imam Suyuti makes this argument, He
says, who is the greatest companion of the
prophet sallallahu alaihi salaam?
Most people would say Abu Bakr Sadiq.
Right? He's the greatest companion of the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wasalam.
He says, think about this. What about Isa
alaihi wasalam? Isn't he a companion?
Because what is a what is a Sahabi?
What is a Sahabi? How do you define
a companion of the prophet?
Yes.
This so somebody
that the prophet saw
while
this person believed in his message because some
of the Sahaba were blind.
Abdullah ibn Maktoum never saw the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wasallam, at least not with the, not
with his physical eye.
Right? The prophet saw while that person believed
in the prophet
And as far as we know, this person
died upon Islam.
Right? That's that's a Sahabi.
So, you know, Abu Bakr Sadiq, Sayna Amar,
Earthman Ali,
These are
Sahaba. Right? But someone like the Najashi, the
king of Abyssinia, who converted to Islam.
Right?
The prophet
never laid eyes on him. Although they're contemporaries,
they lived at the same time. But since
the prophet
never saw him, he's considered a Tabiri.
Right? He's a follower. He's not a Sahabi.
This is what the arlema debate.
Right? So he say, Isa alaihi salaam,
was he seen by the prophet sallallahu alaihi
salaam while Isa alaihi salaam was alive? We
know Isa alaihi salaam was never killed.
Right? He wasn't killed. And the prophet
saw him on.
Right? And we know that Isa Alaihi Salam
will die upon the faith. He's a prophet.
He's gonna come again in the second coming,
not in the capacity of a prophet, but
in the capacity of a
leader, a military leader.
Right?
So he's a companion of the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wasallam. Interestingly enough also,
according to,
Jewish Sharia,
right,
the nesab or the tribal distinction
of the child
is taken from the mother's side.
It's matrilineal.
Whatever your mother is, that's what you are.
This is true in 11 of the 12
tribes,
except for the tribe of Levi.
The tribe of Levi is the tribe of
Mariam alaihis salam.
Harun alaihis salam is from Levi. Musa and
Harun are Levites.
Right? That means
that in order for her son
to be from Bani Israel,
her
husband
has to be from Bani Israel.
Right? But she doesn't have a husband.
Isa alaihis salam,
his birth, we believe in the that
Allah
performed,
that Isa alaihi salam was created in the
womb of Mariam alaihi salam with any without
any male intervention.
Right? That's why in the Quran,
Isa alaihis salam is never quoted as saying
You Comey,
O my people.
Very interesting, the subtlety in the Quran. Every
other prophet says You Comey
because
in order to say that, in order to
call a people
home,
your father has to come from that people,
But Islam doesn't have a father. So what
does he say?
So he's not even from Bani Israel.
He was sent to Bani Israel. He's actually
in our Ummah.
He's a companion of the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam
that was sent before the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam. And this is why we believe in
the second coming. He's gonna come again. This
is mentioned in many many hadith. It's indicated
in the Quran
that he's gonna come back, gonna have a
family, gonna make Hajj. He's going to be
buried next to the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam. There's hadith to indicate that.
Right? So this is something revelatory
that we should we should tell our Christian
friends and neighbors. We believe in the second
coming of Jesus,
peace be upon him. He's going to defeat
the antichrist.
You know, the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam. We
don't wanna talk too much about the antichrist.
Makes people nervous.
By the way, if somebody comes into the
Masjid and starts talking about the Mehdi and
and things like that,
Be careful because a lot of these people
are shayateen in human form that are trying
to get you to say something.
Anyway, the prophet
he said,
he said, I'm going to tell you something
about the the the the antichrist that no
other prophet told their people. He said,
He's 1 eyed, and your lord is not
1 eyed.
And then he said on his forehead
is written
or.
And everyone will be able to read it
whether they're
literate or not.
Right? You know what's trending nowadays?
What's trending? This began in the military, but
now I've seen it
just average people.
They get kafir tattooed on their body,
kafir in Arabic.
I've seen it, like, on the arm you
know, on the bumper sticker.
I saw 1 on the neck.
It's moving up. You know? It's gonna
it's very common.
Right?
They're gonna start making hats probably.
So you and you put it right here.
Kathar.
Very
interesting. Anyway, that's enough about the antichrist.
But what is his message is the
message of the antichrist is the opposite of
the message of Isa alaihi salam. If you
look at the Hadith of Isa alaihi salam.
There's a lot of Hadith of him in
our
tradition. Some of it correlates to things in
the New Testament. Some of it doesn't. There's
a hadith of Ahmad
in which
the prophet
he said that
the and the disciples of Isa Alaihi Salam,
the disciples of Jesus came to him one
day and they said, how is it that
you can walk on water?
And Jesus said, with
certitude.
And they said, we don't understand.
And he said, bring to me 3 objects.
They said, what? He said, bring gold, bring
stones,
and bring mud.
Bring those 3 objects to me, and they
brought it to him. Right? And he said,
what do you say about these objects?
And the disciples said, well, you know, gold
is better than stones and stones are better
than mud.
He says they're all the same to me.
They're all the same to me. If you
can understand the mystery of that, then you
can walk on water. So the Hadith of
Isa alaihis salam, they deal with mote and
akhirah and zuhud.
Death, afterlife, and asceticism.
That's that's the message of Isa alaihis salam
as delivered to us.
Right?
So why is he like this? Why is
he teaching these things? Like he says, the
similitude of of the
the love of mammon, the love of the
world is like a man who's out at
sea on his boat. He's lost. He starts
taking handful of seawater into his mouth.
The more he drinks, the thirstier he gets
and then he dies from it. The sea
represents the dunya, the world. You'll never be
satiated, and it's going to kill
you. Get away from the dunya. This is
his message. Because the religious establishment of his
day,
they were called the the Sadducees.
Right? They were the high priest of the
temple. They didn't even believe in an. They
didn't believe in an afterlife.
Did you know most Jews today don't believe
in an afterlife?
The majority of Jews today don't believe in
an afterlife. Back then, the temple authority did
not believe in an afterlife. They're called the
Sadducees. Are you ready for a bad joke?
When they're resurrected on the day of judgment,
they're gonna be sad, you see.
Sorry.
Anyway
so Isa alaihi wasalam so their message was
one of complete materialism.
This is the only life there is. That's
the message of the Dijal also. Salvation is
through the dunya.
Salvation is through the dunya.
That's why people you know, it's really interesting.
People have these these competitions on Facebook. Who
has the most followers?
I want followers. I mean, think about what
that sounds like.
Right? I want followers.
One of my teachers said that the seeds
of the claim of the pharaoh
lie dormant in the heart of every man.
I am your lord most high.
The seeds of that claim lie dormant in
the heart of every man. And how do
you water those seeds?
Love of fame and love of leadership.
This is how you water those seeds.
Right?
It's like Justin Bieber. You know? He's all
alright. 10,000 believers.
The people who follow him on Twitter, he
calls them believers.
Right? From the word believer. People worship
I mean, that he he has this god
complex. He can do whatever he wants. He's
above the law. Right?
And this is who people are imitating nowadays.
I'm gonna take a selfie of myself.
Selfie means.
You translate selfie to Arabic.
This is my nafsi.
I have 500 followers.
Masha'Allah,
I hope that works out for you,
you know.
Anyway, so we look at the Hadith of
Isa alaihis salam. He's dealing with the people
that are steeped in materialism.
So you can imagine, like, if you have
a piece of paper
and you
fold it and you crease it, how do
you get that paper to stand up straight
again?
You can't just pick it up
and hope it'll stay because it's going to
repel.
Right? You have to crease it the other
way, and it's going to find an equilibrium.
So the Jews at the time of were
steeped in materialism, so he brings pure spirituality,
but he does not negate the Sharia.
This is where our Christian friends and neighbors,
with all due respect, you know, Pauline Christianity,
Hellenistic Christianity, they made a major error
that they think
that abrogated the Sharia.
There's no more Sharia.
Right? This is the message of Paul,
and his adherence.
Whereas,
he followed the Sharia. So we have Sharia
and.
We have
we have the law, which we follow. We
also have spirituality.
And these two things are not in conflict.
Many Muslims, again, they buy into,
kind of this, you know, this Protestant sort
of,
idea that the law and the spirit are
somehow in intention
to one another. We don't believe that as
Muslims. We never believe that. You know, Rumi
is the most popular selling poet
in America.
And the way and some people think Rumi
was like this guy who twirled around and
never prayed and, you know, goofy Sufi.
He was a.
He was a judge in Konya.
I mean, this was a man of Sharia.
Right? A man who never missed prayer missed
a prayer unheard of.
Right?
But people don't see that because
the protestant kind of mindset that we've sort
of bought into is that the Sharia
and spirituality
are intention to one another. That there's a
they've they've been bifurcated.
But that's not how we look at that's
not our conception of religion. That the Sharia
is a means by which to attain spirituality.
Right?
So that that is has to be important.
You know, it's,
America imports a lot of things
overseas.
You know, There's different types of imperialism.
There's obviously going into a country with your
tanks and bombs and so on and so
forth. But Edward Said talks about
imperialism that is done on the level of
linguistics also, and that's it's actually more harmful
when people construct your own religion for you.
Right? Define your terminology.
Right? So he said this is what means,
unmitigated
perpetual warfare against unbelievers.
So when the youth hear hear something like
that, and then they read the Quran,
I can't be Muslim. I don't believe that.
I I can't because they bought into this
idea of this definition of Daniel pipes
that jihad means you have to kill everybody.
Right? So we have to be very, very
careful who defines our religion.
Sometimes we take from other people. We don't
even know what we're doing.
Right?
So if you look at, you know, American
American Protestantism is very different than what we
have, you know, Christianity in the Middle East.
If you go to a church in the
Levant,
right,
like in Syria and villages,
Lebanon,
You'll go to a church, you walk into
the church, and it looks like a masjid,
looks similar to this, people sitting on the
ground, the women behind the men, the women
are covered.
There's people are standing and they're prostrating.
They're reciting in Aramaic.
Right? If you put one of those Christians
in the Staple Center
at a Joel Osteen revival,
you would have no idea what's going on
and what what's going on here. Is this
a concert?
Why? Because the sunnah, this this is the
secret of our religion as Muslims. The secret
of this religion is sunnah transmission.
Our knowledge is taken.
It's taken from someone who took from someone
who took from someone who took from someone
who took from someone who took from someone
who took from a Tabi, who took from
a Sahabi, who took from the prophet who
took from Jibreel alayhi salaam, who took from
Allah
who doesn't take knowledge.
Right? This is called this is called Sanad.
So the Sanad in some of these places
in the Middle East,
the Christianity there is stronger than the Christianity
in America.
Right? So we can see more of the
true Isa alaihi salam in some of those
places. The reality of Isa alaihi salam is
in our ummah.
Right? That Isa alaihis salam was a Muslim.
You know, if Isa alaihis salam walked into
his masjid,
then I asked him,
oh, Isa,
are you a Christian? He wouldn't even know
what I was talking about
because he never heard this word in his
life, his entire life. This is admitted.
Right? What in Christian? What does that mean?
I don't want to offend anybody. This is
a fact.
Right? The book of Acts tells us they
were first called Christians in Antioch after
Right? Submission unto God.
And that's what he says
in the New Testament. Whoever does the will
of God is my mother, my brother, and
my sister.
And
he believed in Allah.
I was flipping the channels years ago, and
there was this man named Pat Robertson. Hope
you've probably heard of him. He ran for
president in 1984.
Thank god he didn't win. Anyway,
I mean, not it's not like we got
somebody much better.
Anyway,
so Robertson, he he was and I've I've
flipped through the channels and I've seen this
show 3 or 4 times.
And every single time, he's talking about Islam,
which leads me to believe he's always talking
about Islam in every
show. One of the things he says was
he said, you know, the Muslims,
they believe in Allah.
And then the lady next to him, who's
a former beauty queen or whatever,
turned born again Christian, she said,
who's Allah?
And then he said, the moon god.
He's the moon
god.
I said, moon god? How do you know
that? And he said, well, you ever seen
the flag of Pakistan?
There's a moon.
And they're like, okay. You know? They also
follow a lunar calendar.
You know, the Jews also
follow a lunar calendar. Right? But no one's
gonna say that they worship the moon god.
You know, in the gospel of Matthew 59,
it says,
blessed are the peacemakers,
for they shall be called the children of
God. And, again, children of God here is
meant metaphorically.
This is. Right?
It means servants raised to honor. Later on,
it was literalized. The story it was made
literal that Jesus is the son of God,
begot not made with the nicene council, so
on and so forth. Anyway,
if you translate that into Aramaic, which Christians
did in the 4th century, this is what
it sounds like.
Allah. Jesus uses the word Allah for God.
How do you say God in Syria? Allah.
Right? That's the word he used himself.
Right?
So this is Yani,
when he comes back and he may come
into this masjid, it's conceivable.
We believe in the second coming.
Right?
You know, he's
he's gonna be able to follow exactly what
we're doing as Muslims. His language was similar.
The way he prayed was similar. His beliefs
are similar. Everything is similar.
Right?
It's like the, the Lord's prayer. The Christians
have this prayer called the Lord's prayer. Right?
That actually rhymes in Aramaic.
There's a rhyme to it, right, that you
lose in translation.
Right? And one time I recited this in
a church so the Christians can hear, you
know,
our father in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
You know? It's
the ending. That's called
in Arabic.
And I said, listen to the Quran now.
It's called Sajah. Does it sound similar?
Right?
So it's very interesting.
You know, we have to you you know,
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam he said,
you know, spread,
or convey from me even one verse or
statement.
So it's our responsibility
as Muslims
to be a good example,
to give dawah. And dawah means an invitation
to a banquet.
And dawah does not mean to stand up
on a stage and give a speech. If
you're an Adam, that's what you do.
Right? Because oftentimes, Muslims do a lot more
damage when they speak, myself included.
Right? For for us, dawah, for the laity,
the best thing we can do is just
be a practicing Muslim because the sunnah of
the prophet is beautiful inherently.
Even if he's just smiling at people, opening
a door, giving up your seat. You know,
one time I was on the subway system
in the Bay Area, it's called the BART
train.
And this this woman came into the BART
train, and I got up and I offered
my seat to her. I didn't know she
was a feminist.
So I don't need your seat.
What do you think I am?
You know? I was like, woah. Sorry. So
you have to be careful. There's there's feminists
out there.
But you should you should be, you should
be kind. You know? And feminism today is
it just means to, for people, it means
to imitate men.
How can you be a feminist? Just imitate
what men are doing. That's not feminism.
Right? You're just copying what men wanna do.
You know, like they used to have in
the 19 eighties, these shoulder pads and the
business suits, because women wanna look bigger, more
imposing like a man.
Right? Very, very strange.
We have to embrace
how god, Allah
how he made us. Like he said, the
prophet
he said, there's 3 things from your dunya
that I love. A good smell, the prayer,
which is a coolness of my eye,
and women. And that does not mean what
the orientalists say it mean. That he's, you
know, you know, it's some sort of, lustful
addiction or something that he has. What he
meant there according to the is that he
loves the feminine qualities
of forbearance and mercy
that he himself had
Right? Like, remember, we we all know the
story, the Bedouin who came into the masjid
and urinated. We've heard this a 1000000 times.
Right?
Do you know what happened after that?
In one version in Ahmed,
Muslim Ahmed. They went outside and this Bedouin,
he turned around, all the men were leaving
the Masjid.
And he said, Allahummairhamni
wa Muhammadan
walatarhammaanaa
ahadan.
He said, oh Allah, have mercy on me
and on Muhammad and nobody else.
Why? Because the sahaba tried to attack him
when he was urinating, in mid urination,
which is quite scary.
So the prophet said, he said, leave leave
him leave him. And they said, okay. We'll
wait till he's done, and then
it's over for him. And he said, no.
No. No. No. So the prophet went with
riff, with gentleness.
He said, no brings, oh, my Arab brother.
You know, these are.
We don't do these things here. These, you
know, we and
and
these these are the things we do in
the masjid. And he didn't know. A lot
of people don't know. They just don't know.
Sometimes we get questions from non Muslims that
seem to be offensive. I got a question
one time in a Unitarian Universalist Church. I'm
thinking, okay. They're they're Unitarian. That's good. But
it was very difficult
because people hear a lot of things.
The guy raised his hand. Why do you
abuse your wife?
Me?
Right? So
before you can ask why, you have to,
you know, you have to know what in
logic, in formal logic they teach you. And
or before you can say why, you have
to know what. Right?
So, I said, how do you know I
abused my wife? He says, well, do you
let your wife drive a car?
And I say, act I actually order my
wife to drive a car.
Then people don't know. You know, we have
to be this other gentleman, he raised his
hand and he said,
I'll never forget this one. He said, I
have a question for you. I said, yes,
sir. He said, I wanna go to Turkey
in the summer.
I said, oh, beautiful.
But I have a concern. I said, what
is your concern? I'm afraid that a group
of Wahhabis
are gonna kidnap me and torture me.
And I said, wait, wait, wait. Isn't that
taken too?
I said, I I said, have you seen
that movie? He said, yeah.
No. You'll be fine. Don't worry about
it.
That people just don't know. Right?
So he said have mercy on me and
on Muhammad and nobody else for dahiqednabi.
The prophet laughed.
He thought that was funny that he made
that dua leaving the mustard. And the prophet
said, no. Don't restrict the mercy of God.
The mercy of God is vast.
It's vast.
Right? You know how we hear all the
time?
You know, I don't know if you're familiar
with sort of,
pietistic sort of representations of Christianity in film
and
in, you know, in TV. But usually, if
they make a Jesus movie,
they'll have the scene where Jesus is crucified,
and then he says, father, forgive them.
Right?
In Greek, he says,
did you know that verse is a fabrication
to the New Testament?
By consensus of New Testament scholars,
that verse was added later to the New
Testament.
In other words, Jesus of course, Jesus was
never crucified.
Right? But from a standpoint of the New
Testament, he never made that statement.
Right? But we all know about it. But
how many people know that the prophet on
the day of Hazwad Uhud with blood streaming
down his face
was trying to catch his blood in his
hands.
He was like this.
And absorbing the blood with his sleeves.
Why? He told the Sahaba, if one drop
of this blood should strike the earth, then
immediately
our enemies
are going to be obliterated.
His enemies that are fighting against him, that
have bloodied his face,
that are killing his companions, that are cannibalizing
his companions
on the battlefield.
If one drops his bill
on the earth, immediately,
the punishment of Allah
will descend on our enemies. And the Sahaba
said, great. Let it flow.
Right? And then they saw him a short
time later, and he had his hands raised,
and he was he was supplicating. And the
Sahaba said, it's over.
This is gonna be
we're they're done.
And and they heard
This is what he said. Oh Allah, guide
my people
for they don't know.
Right? This is what he said, sallallahu alaihi
wasallam. No one's heard of this. But Isa
alaihi wasallam forgive them. They've all heard of
it but he didn't actually say that.
Very strange.
Why? Because our religion again is being defined
for us.
We have to we have to define our
own religion.
Right?
And we can't be this sort of passive
stance where who am I to do things?
No. Do things to your own capacity.
Support organizations that can do that.
Right?
This is very, very important because if we
don't define ourselves, other people's other people are
going to define us. Whoever defines the terminology
controls discourse,
and discourse is everything.
And right now, the discourse is
the good Muslims
are Muslims who do not believe that the
Quran is a word of God as articulated
by the RAND report that was put out
by the RAND Corporation. You know, Dick Cheney
and Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice.
The good Muslims are those who believe that
the prophet
is just a historical figure and that his
life has little to no bearing on our
life today. There's no transcendent universal aspect. And
the Quran is history and poetry.
Those are the good Muslims.
The bad Muslims, they say, are not the
terrorists.
They're bad. But he said even worse than
the terrorists. This is what they say. Even
worse than the terrorists
are traditionalists
who say that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam
is a messenger of God and that his
example is alive today and is dynamic. The
Quran is the worthy of God and its
universal revelation. These are the bad Muslims. These
are the the biggest threat to our
what do they call it? Our strategies in
the world, whatever that means.
Right?
So we we gotta think about this
very clearly in the Quran.
You have the messenger of God, a beautiful
example.
Verily, you dominate praiseworthy character.
Right?
Say if you love Allah, you have to
follow me. You have to follow the prophet
then
will Allah love you.
So
we have to be careful.
You know?
And we can't be afraid. Nobody's doing anything
wrong. No one's advocating violence.
You know? Good citizens. But we believe this
to be a revelation of God.
Everyone makes moral judgments.
Right? Right now in in the academy, Western
Academy, because I go
to Western Academy,
The,
the main issue
that divides
the main issue that non Muslims use in
Western Academy to determine whether a Muslim
is a progressive forward thinker or a backwards
antiquated traditionalist
is how you feel about homosexuality.
This is the main issue.
How do you feel? If you say, I
believe it's a sin. Oh, you're you're a
crazy traditionalist.
You you're you're
you're prejudiced and you're a hateful person.
You know?
It's mentioned you know, it's meant we know
it says in the New Testament?
New Testament.
And, you know, we're not we're not saying,
you know, that any
we're not saying we should hate people or
anything like that. All of us are in
a state of sin. All of us. Right?
But we start denying things that are
that are mentioned in the Quran explicitly. This
is is very dangerous.
It says in the New Testament,
it says in Matthew chapter 10, he told
his disciples.
He says, go into the lands the towns
of Israel, but don't go to the towns
of the Samaritans. And then he says, when
you go to a city and you evangelize
them with the gospel,
if they don't accept your city, leave the
city and shake the dust of that city
off of your feet. For verily,
Sodom and Gomorrah will fare better on the
day of judgment than that city. Do
you understand? He sent his how are you?
And the disciples.
Give them the gospel. If they have kufr,
if they reject the gospel,
shake the dust off your feet, meaning that
city is done.
It's done.
The Qom alut, Sodom and Gomorrah will have
a better time on the day of judgment
than that city.
Right?
Very interesting.
In the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, when he
went to, he was stoned out of the
city.
He didn't send Sahaba, he went himself.
He went alone,
stoned out of the city. His feet were
covered in his own blood. He lost consciousness
under a tree.
Right?
The angel descends, the angel of wrath,
and says,
give me the word.
And these people are done. The Bani Taqif
of the Hawazan, the people of Ta'if. Give
me the word and they're done.
What did he say?
Yeah. Let me shake the dust of the
city off my feet.
No. Bal Arju.
Bal Arju.
And I have hope in their descendants
that people will come and worship Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala as their only god. Today, the
city of Ta'if is completely Muslim. The city
of Ta'if is the greatest exporter of roses
today
because the prophet
did not give up on them.
You know, some people, sometimes,
we have very short thresholds of dawah. Was
in a masjid one time with a group
of brothers. The Christian brother was there. The
Christian brother was asking very critical questions. That's
okay.
He can ask questions. No no problem whatsoever.
Right? As long as he's done with. You
know?
And he was asking questions.
The uncle walks into the masjid.
Uncle.
We call him,
Chachasib.
What we
call him. Walks into the masjid. He listens
to the conversation for 2 minutes.
2 minutes.
And he says in front of everybody, including
the Christian brother,
he says, you know, these
These kafar yeah. They
Allah has put a a cover on their
eyes, brothers.
Their hearts are dead.
They are fuel for the nar.
He's going to burn Khalil Danfihah.
Leave him alone. And the brother said, what
what is what is he talking about? He's
talking about no, brother. This is local Majnoon.
Don't worry about him.
He comes in sometimes. You know?
It's okay. Okay. Thank you, sir.
You know, 2 minutes was the threshold. You
know Abu Sufyan ibn Uharb is fighting against
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam for over
20
years, actively fighting against him, trying to kill
him and killing Ahlulbayt, killing Sahaba
actively.
And the prophet
says to him one day after 20 years,
don't you think it's about time for you
to become Muslim?
And he said you're still you're he said,
SubhanAllah, you're still you're
still kind to me? You still talk to
me after what I've done? I said, yeah.
Of course.
Isn't it about time for you to become
Muslim? You know when they're coming into
Mecca, Fat HaMecca,
the prophet he gave the standard to Saad
ibn Ubada
and said
was saying,
he said,
He was screaming this. Today is a day
of slaughter.
The the basement of the Quresh. And he's
saying this coming into the Haram, and he
passes Abu Sufyan ibn Huram
who who had just become Muslim.
Today is a day of slaughter, the debasement
of the Quraysh.
And the prophet, say, salam,
was told that this is what Saad is
saying.
So he sent a rider to go to
Saad to take the standard from him. And
Saad said, I'm not gonna give it to
you.
He said, no. I was sent by the
prophet. I don't believe you.
And so the rider came back to the
prophet,
and he says, Sad, he's not giving it
up.
I don't know what to do. The prophet
he takes off his blessed imama.
He says, present this to Sad and say
give up the the standard, the liwa.
And then he said, but give it to
his son, Qais,
who is next to him.
Look at the hikmah of the prophet sallallahu
alaihi sallam. He knows that sad will have
his feelings hurt if you take the standard.
But if you honor the son, you honor
the father. If I shake your son's hand,
I'm honoring you.
So he goes to and he says, give
up this thing. Here's the turban of the
prophet. Immediately, he gives it up. And he
said, here, give it to your son, though.
Right? And the prophet
he walks he rides by Abu Sufyan who's
very obviously
distraught by what he was hearing. And he
says to
him, Today is a day of mercy, the
exaltation of the Quraish. Today is a day
of mercy, the exaltation of the Quraish.
Right? This is the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam. And he could have taken out the
entire city.
You know, it says in the Torah,
in the Christian bible,
it says that when you go to a
city
and conquer it,
if the if the people of that city
don't willingly become your slaves,
kill the men and take the women and
children as captives.
However,
if that city
is in the lands that the lord thy
god gives thee as an inheritance,
meaning Palestine,
save nothing that breathes.
Destroy everything.
Man, women, child, animals. You know what happened
to Jericho?
Is we don't read the Bible. Very interesting.
Complete decimation.
31 city states.
Men, women, and children. Total genocide.
Right? The prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, the people
of Mecca, they know we've committed khiyana. We've
warred against
him. He could take us all out right
now. They come to,
you are a noble brother.
The prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, he climbs
Abu Khur base.
He's going to make an announcement and people
think, the Meccans, the Quraysh, the mushrikeen, they
all were done.
What does he
say?
There's no there's no blemish on you today.
There's nothing wrong with you. Allah has forgiven
you.
Exactly what Yusuf alaihi salaam said to his
brethren
when Yusuf when they came to Egypt. SubhanAllah,
this is rahmatullahi lalameen.
And this is the message we have to
tell people about the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam. That the message of the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam is
perfectly in agreement with the true gospel of
Isa alaihi wa sallam. Both of these are
prophets. They're both brethren. There's a hadith of
the prophet where he says, the closest to
me in disposition
is Isa ibn Mariam. The closest to me
in my character is Jesus, the son of
Mary, and there's no prophet between us.
Right? These are these are all brethren.
We believe in all of the prophets.
Right? And Islam restores the true theology of
the
true gospel. I'll end with this and open
for questions.
The mush the the kafar, the unbelievers from
the people of the book, meaning people of
the bible, Jews and Christians, and the idolaters
are not going to break away from their
unbelief until there comes to them
clear evidence.
What is clear evidence? The next verse.
A messenger from God who recites to them
purified scrolls.
In these scrolls are books that are made
correct.
Very interesting. The say
here, why does Allah say? Why does he
describe the Quran with the word books instead
of like he does in other places?
Because the essence,
the truth of the Torah and the gospel
and the zabur
are found in the Quran itself.
The essence of that teaching. This is progressive
revelation.
Right?
So
becoming a Muslim
is becoming
truly a follower of Isa alaihis salam.
Right?
Become a true follower of Isa alaihis salam.
So we'll end it there, Inshallah.
I'm sorry if I said anything that offended
anyone. Wasn't our intention.
I'm sorry I spoke so long. I know
everyone's kind of tired.
But if we can have you can leave
anytime you want. We won't be offended.
But if you wanna ask some questions or
make some comments or throw things at me,
please feel free. I'll talk under the table.
Yes, sir.
Yeah. So many of these hadith have weakness
in them.
Many of these hadith.
So usually they come from,
the Tabi'in.
They come from the Tabi'in. So many of
them don't actually go back to the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wasallam. So we approach them with
caution. Some of them do go back to
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam. Like in Bukhari
and Ahmad.
What's that?
He said it himself. Some of them come
from Sahaba, which could have hukum marfur,
which means that they could have heard it
from the prophet but we don't know for
certain. So we approach those hadith with caution
with of caution.
Many of them originate with the Tabi'im.
Right? Imam Ghazali will quote a lot in
the Ihiya al Umid Din. He'll quote a
lot from Isa alaihi salaam, you know, acknowledging
that many of the Hadith have weakness in
them. But Imam Ghazali is dealing with the
same type of mentality
that dealt with,
you know, this kind of emphasis on formalism.
Right? The emphasis on the on the exoteric
aspect of the religion and not so much
on the the inner aspect.
So he's dealing with symptoms that Isa alaihi
wasalam was dealing with as well.
So for purposes of edification, you can quote
weak hadith. A weak hadith does not mean
it's forged. It's not.
You know? Imam has a book called
where he collects all of the forged hadith.
No.
Has a book.
Right? A hadith that is
means it passes, but it's like a c
minus.
If you get a c minus on a
test, you're like,
but I passed. Right? That's what that's what
a weak hadith is. So you don't use
a weak hadith for aqida and you don't
use it for sharia, but you can use
it for nasihah. You can use it for
advice edification. So that's what he's
doing. Yes, sir.
Yeah.
You you have to get a report. It
was put out a few years ago.
It's called,
it's it's, called Fear Incorporated,
the center of
American progress.
You can find that. You can Google this.
The organization that put it out is called
the Center of American Progress,
called Fear Incorporated. And I think the subtitle
is, tracing the roots of Islamophobia in America.
And this is phenomenal work that was done
by these,
young
people, many of whom are non Muslim.
The principal author is a brother named Mujahat
Ali, who's actually related to me through marriage.
But in that report, they document
7 individuals that received over
$40,000,000
from various conservative think tanks for the express
purpose
of rewriting Islam in America,
changing Islam from from within, as they say.
And how do you do that? You define
Muslim terminology for the Muslims.
Right? So that
they have no choice but to conform to
their definitions.
Right?
So this is this is quite you know,
it's very
it's a big ambitious theological project that they're
doing. It used to be like the orientalists
will just kind of outright slander the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wasallam. So the Quran is from
the Satan and so on and so forth.
And and one of them said, this was
the abbot of Cluny. They lied too, like,
outright. The abbot of Cluny was I think
his name was Peter, the so called venerable.
He said, the
prophet died in the year 666,
which is the mark of the beast in
the book of Revelation, which is total lie.
Not even close to 632, 631,
something like that. But, you know, he's going
to he's going to lie. So but now
it's hard to just lie like that. So
what they do is they bring this guy
on TV who has a PhD in Islamic
history or something. He's got a he's got
a tie on. You know? So, oh, he's
legit.
Right? And then he gives these statements
that no Muslim on earth actually believes.
Right? So he's building a straw man. In
philosophy, that's called building a straw man.
Right? So you say, for example,
if I go to a Christian and I
say and, of course, I would never say
this, but this is an an atheist would
I might say this and say,
Jesus used to kill children.
And then the Christians say, woah. What? What?
What are you talking about? Jesus used to
kill children.
What do you mean? It says in the
infancy gospel of Thomas that when Jesus was
a schoolboy, he used to kill children for
fun.
And the Christian response would be, I don't
believe that's a canonical book. That's not in
the New Testament.
That's spurious. That's apocryphal.
Right?
So you can't use that in order to
disprove Christianity because Christians don't believe in it.
You see what I'm saying? So it's very
important that
the youth, especially, and there's a faith crisis
with the youth, many of them there's a
lot of ridda, people leaving Islam,
becoming Christian or leaving Islam.
And it's because they don't have access to
authentic authoritative
knowledge. You have to stay in,
in in contact
with the ulama of even of your community.
Now we have the Internet. You can you
can take lessons from around
the world. There's really no excuse.
If you have questions on,
because many of the immigrants like my parents
that came to the country, there was an
Internet when they were small. Everyone was Muslim.
They never heard
Richard Dawkins
give a lecture or they never, you know,
let's listen to Christopher Hitchens.
Right? So most of their questions back then
were related to orthopraxis,
like, issues.
You know? That's their question. But nowadays, the
youth today, their questions are not orthopraxis.
They have questions of orthodoxy.
In other words, how do you know there
is a law? How How do you know
this is the word of God? How do
you know he's a messenger of God? And
the immigrant community is just not equipped to
answer these questions.
So the youth, they go
elsewhere. They go to the Internet. They go
to Sheikh, Google, and Imam Wikipedia.
They go
there and they put in their question. The
prophet had many wives and they, oh,
okay.
And then next thing you know,
I've met many youth that have confided to
me personally that they're not even Muslim and
they're in the masjid with their father reading
a, praying sunnah. He said, I'm going through
motions
because I don't wanna disappoint my father.
I'm not I'm not even Muslim anymore. That's
what they say.
Because they're addicted to these
things on the Internet.
So there's a difference between information and knowledge.
What's on the Internet is a lot of
information.
Knowledge, however,
is different.
Knowledge is information
that has been verified through authoritative
channels.
Right?
And it's also something that's implemented.
So it's it's very important that we take
our knowledge, our dean, from authoritative scholars.
I mean, this is just 101.
Right?
Do you guys know who Elmo is
from Sesame Street? Something like you know Elmo.
Right?
Elmo.
Elmo. Elmo means god, by the way. It's
a theophoric name.
Anyway, if Elmo goes on TV and says,
you know, you shouldn't drink I'm not gonna
do my Elmo impersonation in the, usually I
do it. Anyway,
he says if he says, if you drink
Diet Coke, it's gonna give you osteoporosis.
Are you gonna believe Elmo?
You might think, wait a minute. Elmo is
a puppet.
He's best friends with Cookie Monster, who's a
junkie.
I'm not going to believe Elmo on this
one.
Right?
But what about Elmo who puts on a
suit and tie?
And he says, you know, so we have
a bunch of Elmos. Daniel Pipes, Steve Emmersons,
David,
Ayan Hirsi Ali. You know, these
people, Steve Emerson,
right, who look legit, but it's really a
bunch of Elmos up there.
Because they don't have they've never studied traditional
sciences. They don't know Islam. They have a
few sound bites that they use. But if
doctor Oz you know who doctor Oz is.
Right? Doctor Mohammed Oz. His first name is
Mohammed, by the way. Mehmed.
The the the Turkish, they use Mehmed.
If he says,
don't drink diet Coke, he gives you osteoporosis.
You might go, okay, doctor Oz. He knows
what he's talking about. What's the difference?
Doctor Oz is a doctor. He studied. He
has knowledge that is from transmission from a
doctor. He studied under a doctor. Who studied
under a doctor. Who studied under I don't
know.
Who's the first doctor?
Right? So that's so the youth don't know
how to navigate that, They'll read something on
the Internet by doctor
so and so. The prophet was this and
that. Oh, a doctor said it. Or they
go to the university.
They take a philosophy class at the university.
And he's a PhD in philosophy,
and he's an atheist, and he's saying all
of these crazy things about Muslims and Islam.
And this youth who's 18, 19, 20 years
old,
he's completely swayed by it. And then he
goes home to his father. This is what
I heard. And his father says, don't worry
about that. Go pray.
Go make.
That's not going to help me. Go make.
You know?
So it's important that
we have balance in our life. You know?
You know, earn a living,
raise a family,
but also be in contact
with the Muslim Scholastic community
and always be in a program of study
once a week, twice a week, something like
that. Learn something. Learn Quran. Learn Tajweed. Learn
Arabic. Learn theology.
Learn whatever you want to learn. Learn one
of these sacred sciences. It'll keep your iman
fresh. And don't forget the dhikr.
The prophet
said, renew your faith by saying
Say this. One of my teachers said, you
can
say without opening your mouth. Ready?
You don't know what my tongue's doing.
You can say it. I can't make I
can't take out my dhikr beads on the
train, and I can't go on.
People are going, oh, this guy, he's insane.
You don't have to you don't have to
do it internally.
Make dhikr.
Right? Make dhikr. It has an effect on
the heart. The name of Allah is Wadi.
There's a hadith of the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam. He said on the day of judgment,
there's a prophecy. On the day of judgment,
a man will come
whose
bad deeds are gonna be presented
on scrolls,
99 scrolls,
stretched out as far as the eye can
see.
And it's gonna be placed on one side
of the mizan
of a scale.
And then a card, a this
is called Hadith al
A card is put on the other side
of the scale, but written on the card
is
And the card will fall and the scrolls
will rise.
And Allah will say to the man, nothing
nothing is waiter than my name.
Right?
So we we have to have a good
opinion of Allah
This doesn't mean that we become lax in
our deen
and we start saying things like, you know,
I get this while I speak Farsi.
My is
pure.
And he said, why don't you come pray
with us? My heart. You don't know?
I have
me and Allah.
No, brother. Prayer is.
No, brother.
I make dua. My prayer is in my
heart.
Right? Like his brother said one time, I'm
fasting in my heart.
He's eating like this. Brother, what are you?
It's Ramadan, brother. Brother, Ramadan. I'm fasting in
my heart.
You know?
And say, brother, the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam whose Maqam and Mahmoud prayed 6 times
a day. Salatul
Tajjud, a third of the night is wajib
on him. He prays 6 times a day,
but you've transcended prayer.
There was a great scholar, Sheikh Abdul Qadil
Al Jilani. He's walking down the road, and
he would have revelatory experiences, you know, muka
Shafa'at and things like that. And one time
he says walking down the road and suddenly
the heavens opened,
And he felt this warmth come over him.
And a soothing voice said, you, Sheikh.
You don't have to pray anymore.
You're above the prayer.
You've transcended the prayer.
Mashallah
for you.
Know what the sheikh said? He said, you
are a person. And then the vision went
away. Iblis
trying to mess around.
Imam Abu Qasem al Junaid, one of the
great articulators of Tisawaf from Baghdad,
he made du'a. He wanted to he wanted
to speak to Iblis.
He said, Allah, please send me Iblis. I'm
going to ask him a question.
This is what's related from him.
Walking down the streets of Baghdad, he sees
a man motioning to him like this.
And Al Junaid said, when he saw the
man, he started shaking immediately.
So he goes and he says, what do
you want? And the man says, you're the
one that I'm the one that you've been
wanting to ask. I'm Chetan.
And then he composes himself and he says,
why didn't you make sajdah to Adam?
What's wrong with you? Why didn't you make
sajdah?
And Shaytan says,
You want me to make sajdah to a
human being and not Allah?
Are you kidding me? This is Shaikh. And
Junaid said
I said,
no. You're a liar.
That's not what you said. You said
Right? So he was trying to play with
him. That's what shaitan does. And this is
not a of.
When the angels made this is for.
This is for respect, and this has been
abrogated in our religion. We don't make sajda
in any form to any human being or
creation, only to Allah. So there's no more
like when Yusuf alaihi salam
Right? I saw 11
stars and the sun and the moon make
to me.
Here again is for.
It's for respect. Because Yaqub alaihi salaam, when
he heard that, he didn't say, astaghfirullah. Who
do you think you are, god?
No. He said, don't tell your brothers they're
gonna try to do something because he understood
the context of that.
But this is what Shaitan does.
He's gonna play with the mind a little
bit.
You know? And we have protections. We have
we have to be in.
Is a protection.
We recite.
We recite
the 2 last surahs of the Quran. Recite.
Right? Go to Salatul Jum'ah.
Right? Have these sorts of,
the the the prophetic invocations. Learn the of
the prophet sallallahu alaihi sallam. The prophet used
to have a du'a for every occasion.
When he goes into the bathroom, when he
walks out of the bathroom, when he walks
into the house, when he starts to eat,
when he's done eating, when he goes to
his wife, when he leaves his wife, there's
always a dua. When he looks in the
mirror,
Right? Oh Allah, just as you have made
my outward appearance beautiful, beautify my inward appearance.
One time I said that to a brother
and he said, well, I'm ugly so I
can't make that dwell.
I
said, no, brother.
Allah has ennobled. As long as you're a
human being, whether you're black or white or
tall or short or have long hair, short
hair, man or woman, you're you're beautiful.
Any questions from the sisters?
You can write it down if you like
to.
Yes, sir.
Yeah. The thing is
debates are kind of,
I don't recommend doing debate. I used to
do a lot of debates when I was
younger,
and it's hard to find people with.
You know, we can have, you know,
academic debates at university, and I continue to
do things like that. But many
many people don't have
the the etiquette for doing,
debates.
You know, Ahmed Didad,
he was Yani. Mashallah. He's one of my
main inspirations.
You know Sheikh Khalid Yassine?
I spoke to Sheikh Khalid Yassine recently.
And he told me, Sheikh Khalid Yacine told
me that in 1996
he visited Ahmadidad
in Durban.
And Ahmadidad told him
personally, he said, in America,
don't imitate my style.
Don't imitate my style. This is what Ahmedida
told him personally.
He said, I bulldozed it. Now you have
to plant seeds.
Right?
So,
you know,
we we have to we have to be
people of Rahma. We have to be people
of, you know, Ahmedidah, you know, he was
raised in a racist apartheid government where he
was picked on on a daily basis. So
he had a chip on his shoulder,
and he did did things for the sake
of Allah
But there's different ways of dealing with problematic
Christians, for example, like David Wood or, you
know, these people. These people are not very
academic to begin with,
you know.
Their main impetus, it seems like, is to
denigrate Muslims,
because
somehow
they may be,
there might be some financial sort of gain
in doing that for them, writing books and
things like that defaming us.
So I encourage interfaith dialogue, and
it's important that in addition
to in addition to, you know,
telling people things that we have in common,
we also have to tell them things that
we have in difference,
because a lot of Christians nowadays, in particular,
they're looking for an alternate theology.
The the
the trinity is just not working for a
lot of Christians. It's just not working.
Right?
So they love Jesus, which is good, and
they love his teaching, and they love Christian
ethics. And Christian,
ethical theory is is beautiful. You know, Thomas
Aquinas is very similar to Imam Ghazali and
Ibn Sina in that in that sense,
But the theology isn't working. So when we
present our theology to them, right, many of
them become Muslim
because it answers their questions.
But we have to do it in a
way
With wisdom and with wise exhortation.
Yes, ma'am.
That's a good question.
I'm I'm sure there's online academies that have
female
teachers. If you wanna, email me, I can
give you my information. I can probably find
some of those online academies that specialize
in
in issues related to women that have women
scholars.
Actually women.
But there there are actually a lot out
there. I think I think we're we're just
kind of oblivious to the resources. But there
are actually a lot of online academies
out there that have women scholars.
Yes.
The the only thing that's reliable about Isa
Alaihi Salam
is found in the Quran and the sound
Hadith.
Right? So this is what we call,
a Dalil.
If it's in the Quran, it's Dalil Katari,
which means that it's a definitive proof. There's
no doubt about it. This is this is
what Isa Alaihi Salam said. Because Allah
tells us what he said.
Said, a messenger is coming whose name is
Ahmed.
And even if we can't find a single
verse in the entire new testament where he
makes that claim, it doesn't matter to us
because we know that's true. Because we believe
in the Quran and we believe that the
prophet is
and even his enemies, they call them.
The enemies actually began calling him the truthful
one. Right?
So we believe in the Quran as a
word of God, and the Quran is not
judged against any other book.
Even with that said, there are places actually
in the New Testament where does
seem to indicate a messenger to come after
him.
But we stop where Allah and his messenger
has stopped, and that is sure knowledge.
After that, it's kind of theorizing.
Right?
And that's the realm of the scholar to
do that.
You know?
So what what the Quran teaches about Jesus
Christ, peace be upon him, what the prophet
said about the Hawarayun and Isa alaihis salam,
that's that's sure knowledge. That's
reliable.
How many of the what's that?
Yeah. There's there's tens of thousands of hadith.
So, you know, we have the tradition of
the sound 6 books.
Right? Who knows the sound 6 books?
Who's who's under 15? Who knows the sound
6?
Bukhari?
Muslim,
Ibn Maja, yeah,
and Nisai,
Nesai.
What's the one? Last one?
Abu Dawood. Yeah. Sunan Abu Dawood.
So these are called the sound 6. Now
there's other books of hadith. You know, at
Tabarani,
you have, Ahmed, right, that contains sound Hadith
as well.
So Hadith authentication is a is a rigorous
process.
But,
you know, imam imam Bukhari there's some Muslims
who believe that if imam Bukhari didn't say
it, then it doesn't exist. I quoted a
hadith one time in a in a and
a brother right after the prayer, he stood
up and he said,
this brother, he quotes Hadith that is and
his
is and
and I said, what Hadith are you talking
about? And he quoted the hadith, I said.
And and
he said, what book of hadith is it?
And I said, this is a hadith that's
in Al Bazar.
He said, I've never even heard of that.
So I said, so what does that mean?
It doesn't exist?
That's a non sequitur argument and logic. So
I said to the brother, I said, do
you know my cousin, Moe?
He said, no.
But he exists?
Just because you don't know him. Right?
So, you know, even even Imam Bukhari and
his we call it Sahib Bukhari. But his
title, if you look at the full title,
right,
like
Actually, that word is included in his title.
Meaning this is an abridgment of hadith. Imam
Bukhari himself admits there are many many other
hadith,
but this is just a few hadith.
Right?
But generally speaking, the sound 6 are considered
to be the best books of hadith.
Rigorously authenticated. What does it mean for a
hadith to be authenticated rigorously?
That means it's if it's related to the
prophet, say, salam.
Means that it says,
the prophet said. That's called.
It's also
meaning there's no breaks in the chain of
transmission.
There's no missing links in the sunnah of
the Hadith.
Okay? That's called Mutasil.
Also,
everyone in the Hadith is identified
as being a person of adala,
of outward religiosity,
of righteousness.
Everyone is identified in the Hadith as being
truthful
and being someone who's outwardly at least religious.
In the Hadith, scholars were very, very meticulous
about taking Hadith from different people. One of
them said, if I see a man standing
up and drinking water, I'm not going to
take Hadith from him, Even though it's totally
permissible to stand and drink water. But he
wanted to be so stringent.
Right? Because the prophet,
he wouldn't stand and drink water. He would
sit and drink. Right? Another one, Imam Bukhari.
He went he walks to another country to
get one hadith from a man. He saw
the man at a distance
pretending he had food in his hand to
trick his horse.
And then, Imam Bukhari turns around and goes
home. I'm not taking hadith from a man
who's gonna trick an animal.
They're so stringent. So not only is the
hadith, it's,
everyone in the chain has,
but in in addition
to
that,
everyone in the chain
has
meaning they have very good memories and are
known as being intelligent people, educated people.
And in in addition to that, there's no
there's no sort of irregularity in the chain
of hadith.
So sometimes you might see that so and
so heard from so and so, and both
people have and both people have intelligence,
but it's just unlikely that these two people
might have met because they're from different countries.
That affects the authenticity of the Hadith. When
all of these things are met, then the
Hadith is graded as sahir.
It's very, very stringent.
If you want a good book on hadith,
I recommend
a book by Jonathan Brown,
who's a Muslim scholar,
young scholar. I I think he's at Georgetown.
It's called Hadith.
So Jonathan AC Brown.
Right? Because there are a lot of misconceptions
about Hadith. Do we have to follow Hadith?
What is a Hadith? Is a Hadith the
same as the Quran?
Or, you know,
which hadith are authentic? You know?
Oh, off topic, but
what is the significance of the different motions
of prayer?
Etcetera.
Yes.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I studied this a while ago, and it's
not coming to me. But I'm sure
maybe the brother knows.
And it's okay to say I don't know.
Imam Ali used to say, I used to
love saying I don't know.
You know, there was a man in Morocco
who
traveled by foot. He walked from Morocco
to Medina
to sit with Imam Malik ibn Anas.
Just to sit with the Imam. Look how
how much
trouble people would go through just to sit
with a scholar. Now we have Internet. We
can connect with scholars
like that. We don't do it. Right? So
he said he went to Imam Malik ibn
Anas. Right? The the codifier of the Maliki
School of Shirk, the author of Al
Muwata. And he said, I asked Imam Malik
36 questions.
36 questions.
His answer to 32 of them was
And then he answered 4. And I went
back to Morocco
very happy that he answered 4 of my
questions.
He answered 32 by saying, I don't know.
God knows.
And he answered 4.
So I'm using that story as my excuse.
Yes,
sir.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. The Jews, it's called.
They actually have a lot more rules and
regulations concerning food.
For example, they can't mix meat and dairy
at all, so you can't have a cheeseburger
ever.
Right? You have to hold the cheese on
the burger.
And many other rules like that. There's a
lot of different rules about seafood and things
like that.
So the Islamic Sharia, it really ameliorates.
It really makes it easier.
Right? Allah says in the Quran that the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, he's foretold in the
Torah and the gospel, and he removes from
the
the heavy yokes that are on their backs.
And the tafsir says, in the form of
so many rules and regulations that they made
for themselves.
Even the Christians, I mean, if you're Catholic,
you follow canon law, and there's thousands of
rules in canon law.
And you have, for example, protestants, like Methodists,
They have a whole code of conduct that
they follow, a lot of rules. Don't think,
oh, the Christians, they don't have any rules.
They have many, many rules. When it comes
to dietary laws, the Christians are very lax,
specifically when it comes to dietary laws
because they do believe that the death of
Jesus on the cross,
which is their belief this is from Paul,
obviously,
Hellenistic Christianity,
abrogates. It renders all of the of
the Torah
Mansukh.
All of the all
the legal rulings
of the old testament had been abrogated by
the death of Jesus so they can eat
whatever they want.
Right?
But, of course, Isa alaihi salaam,
he followed the, prohibitions.
So,
you know, if he's your master, then you
should emulate him in that respect.
Never ate pork.
What's that?
The old testament is simply one big Christological
typology.
It's, in other words, it's a foreshadowing of
Jesus.
So
the laws that are revealed to the Israelites,
they followed them, but then they've been abrogated.
Now stories in the old testament for Christians
like,
pharaoh slaughtering the firstborn of Egypt,
that's a typology or a prophecy of what
Herod would do in Bethlehem.
Moses coming out of Egypt is foreshadowing Jesus
coming out of Egypt according to the gospel
of, Matthew.
So it's one big sort of prophecy of
Christ. That's the way they look at the
old testament.
Hijab in Christianity. Orthodox Christian women
cover their hair, I guess it says?
Sorry. I can't read
the date with
what do they say as to why their
women don't even,
cover their heads? Yeah. So it depends on
what Christians you talk to. If you have
you ever been to a
Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Hall? Probably not because they
won't even let you go in. But in
the kingdom halls,
the women sit behind the men, and they're
always wearing hijab, and they're not allowed to
speak either because the New Testament says that
a woman may not speak in church. So
they follow the new testament quite literally. Other
Christians have different readings of new testament.
Like, for them, Paul's
prescriptions in the new testament,
are contextualized
to those
times. They're not universal in that sense. They
just have a different way of looking at
revelation in scripture
than what Muslims do.
But in the in Catholic tradition,
the habit, right, nuns were a habit.
And according to which convent they belong to,
they don't give you the habit initially.
The habit is actually,
a.
It's an actual it's kind of like a
reward that they get
when they prove after many years that they're
actually dedicated to the convent, and then they're
awarded with a habit. That's how much they
honor the habit or the hijab.
So I I remind my Christian friends, you
know, have you ever seen a picture of
Mary
or an icon of Maryam
where she wasn't wearing a hijab?
Right?
You know, in 1st century Palestine, I said
this one time, and a woman came up
and she was cussing at me. So don't
take this the wrong way. This is just
the fact I'm telling you right now. That
1st century Palestine,
a Jewish woman, a woman that did not
wear hijab
was either a gentile, meaning a non Jew,
or a prostitute.
That was just at that time. Don't take
this the wrong way. Again, I'm just giving
you this historical information.
A man without a beard at that time
was a gentile or a homosexual.
Again, don't take this the wrong way.
Okay? Obviously, these things don't cross over to
our culture.
But just to emphasize to you the importance
of the hijab and the beard at that
time amongst the people of Isa alaihi salaam.
Very, very important.
Right?
Even if you look at, you know, Christian
movies, Mary Magdalene, whom they believe was a
prostitute, there's no evidence she was at all.
She might have actually been his wife, the
wife of Esa Aries. But Christian a pope
made a comment, in the 5th century, that
she was a prostitute.
Before she becomes Christian, her head is uncovered.
But, suddenly, when she becomes a disciple, suddenly,
she's wearing a hijab. Why? Because it's a
symbol of religiously oriented women.
Again, I'm not saying women that that don't
wear hijab are prostitutes.
Please don't say I'm saying that. I'm just
giving you some insight as to the cultural
context of the time of Islam in Palestine.
Okay?
The New Testament says
Paul says that,
a woman
who
prays with her head uncovered
must have her hair shaved.
This is New Testament. This is an Old
Testament that's been abrogated. This is what Paul
says in the New Testament. He also says
a woman who speaks in church,
is a
so he says, it is a shameful act
for a woman to speak in church.
This is what Paul says. Let me tell
you another one of my
very interesting true stories. I was in a
church called Saint Paul Methodist Church in Fremont,
California. And I'm up on the stage. I'm
having a dialogue with the pastor.
This Christian woman in the back row,
who I later found out was a physician.
She's very educated.
In the middle of my talk, she stands
up and starts shouting at me.
And all I heard was, Muhammad,
Muhammad,
Muhammad,
like that.
So and I have a microphone and, you
know, I'm not gonna get into a shouting
match, but I don't want people to hear
what she's saying either. So I go.
Right? And then she, you know, she kind
of exhausted herself and she sat down.
And I was thinking, you know, what did
I I mean, we're just having a nice
civil conversation.
So I said to her, I said, what
is the name of this church that we're
in right now?
She said, Saint Paul Methodist, and don't you
forget it. I said, let me quote to
you from Paul.
Paul says a woman who speaks in church
has done a shameful act.
What you just did right now was shameful.
He also says because I saw her earlier
praying like this. She went like this and
she was, like, praying against me or something.
I said, a woman who prays with her
head uncovered, let's shave her head. This is
what Paul says.
So I said, please,
let's
get out the clippers.
Let's shave this woman's head.
And then she just she was obsessed with
she actually was to follow me around to
different for
months
Or, you know, I'd go to, like, UC
Davis, which is 100 of miles away, and
she would be there at the event. I'd
go give a in the tenderloin in San
Francisco. She's outside the Masjid.
She would follow me around. Until one day
my dad confronted her, and dad don't play.
What is the best way to teach our
youth,
children, teen, and preteen?
So
the Imam Ali said,
teach your children three things.
Teach your children the love of their prophet
and the love of his family
and the recitation of the Quran.
Right. Teach your children the love of the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam. That means you have
to tell them who the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam is
because that's what's going to really
impact them for the rest of their life.
If they love the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam
from a young age, they will continue to
love him
because childhood is when these things are set
in stone.
Right?
That's why it's very difficult for for people
when they have these traumatic childhood experiences
to move past them
because things have been set in stone. So
if children's emotions are tied in love to
the prophet
that will stay there. Love of the prophet,
love of his family, love of the Ahlulbayt
of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. And
also reading recitation
of the Quran. If they love to recite
the Quran, they will continue to recite the
Quran and they'll learn to the meanings of
the Quran. Then they'll study tafsir of the
Quran and then the of the Quran, and
they'll stay like that.
There's a lot of wisdom in this saying
of Imam Ali
So how do you do it?
You know, get your children involved
in,
Sunday school and make sure this the the
teachers,
you know, we have a lot of teachers
in Sunday schools that are well intentioned, but
they're sort of out of touch with the
youth.
Right? The youth can't really confide in them.
So, a good thing to do is put
your children in different halakat
where there are younger,
speakers
that, you know, that can
that were raised in the society and they've
sort of dealt with some of the challenges
that they're going through.
Right? That can sort of mentor them. Youth
need Muslim mentors
sort of guide them, ask them questions. We,
you know, we had a halakah when you
know, a few years ago. And I get
questions
all the time from youth that they would
never ask their parents,
You know, brother, I wanna do a secret
nikah.
I'm in LA right now, and he's from
San Francisco. And I wanna do a secret
marriage right now. Can I do it? Brother,
I want I'm a I'm sitting in the
in a tattoo parlor right now.
Should I do it?
You know? This type of thing.
So
and they're full of these questions, and they
need to have someone who's available who's not
going to judge them or scold them in
a harsh way.
So have them involved,
in the Sunday school program where they're learning,
you know, different early woman dean,
and also,
look for a mentor
that's, you know, not quite as old as
you are, but not exactly a child, kind
of a go betweener.
Like, I'm not really I'm I guess I
am an uncle.
But, you know,
with many of the the high school youth,
I'm not old enough to be their actually,
I am old enough to be their father.
Whatever. So I'm sort of a go betweener.
Right?
So, you know, find people like, you know,
that dynamic people that can that can help
your children if they have issues.
You and you have to seek them out
and you have to have
patience and things like that.
Hope that answers
the question.
Last question. Yes,
sir.
Okay. We'll deal with James first. There's nothing
in our sources that mention James,
but historical sources mention, western sources mention
that very early on, even 1st century, there
were 2 distinct forms of Christianity.
There's Jamesonian
Christianity,
which is more Semitic in its orientation, more
Jewish in its orientation.
Then you have Pauline Christianity,
which is more Hellenistic in its orientation.
And that these 2 are in conflict. If
you read, for example, the book of Galatians,
which is a letter that Paul wrote,
Paul has major major difference of opinion, fundamental
difference of opinion with other disciples of Jesus.
And you have to you have to ask
the question,
why is Paul lashing out against these other
disciples if they're all Christians and they believe
in the same thing?
In Galatians, he calls them hypocrites
and he calls them dogs and enemies of
the cross, and he identifies who his opponents
are. And he says they are
Kepha and Yaakov
and Yohanan,
Peter, James, and John. These are the enemies
of Paul, according to Paul. These are disciples
of Jesus.
So James is the brother of Isa alaihi
salam.
He's a successor. He's the Khalifa of Isa
alaihi salam.
In Hebrew, his name is Yaakov
Hat Sadiq,
James
the just, which is very interesting because his
lakab,
hat satiq, is the same lakab as Abu
Bakr as satiq.
Right? In the gospel of Thomas, which is
rejected by Christians,
but very interesting gospel, and I think there's
a lot of truth in it.
In statement number 12 of the gospel of
Thomas, Jesus says, when I am gone, you
must go to James the just
for whose sake heaven and earth came into
being.
James is very, very important.
Right?
So you have these 2 distinct forms of
Christianity.
So what happened to the Jamesonian
school? The Jamesonian school was eventually
declared illegal
because Constantine, the Roman emperor,
he became Christian, and then he instituted Pauline
Trinitarian
Christianity.
And there's no separation of church and state,
obviously.
So the Roman emperor says, this is a
Christianity
that I'm endorsing,
all other forms are illegal.
So they go underground. That's why they they
keep finding archaeologists, they keep finding these,
you know, gospels and writings that have been
buried in the sands of Egypt and Syria
and so on and so forth. Because these
communities,
Christian communities,
were suddenly declared heretics
by Roman imperial edict.
Right? But that strain of Christianity
was revived in Islam. Islam is
the,
the renewal,
the recapitulation
of that original Jamesonian
Christianity,
that Semitic Christianity that was originally preach preached
by Isa alaihi salam.
You know?
The other question that's just a brief answer
because it's very late. But the next, question
about,
the second coming. No. The the Hadith that
deal with the Mehdi are weak.
But the Hadith that deal many of them
are weak.
But the Haditha deal with Isa alaihi salam,
most of them are very strong.
That's why if you read the
like Abu Jafar at Tawawi, he wrote he
wrote
the
is very, very stringent
as to what goes into it.
So is theology.
What do Muslims have to believe? Right?
Comes from
which means to tie something.
Right?
Remove the knot from my tongue. So these
are beliefs that are binding upon Muslims. You
have to believe in them.
Aqidah looks at Quran.
It looks at,
Hadith,
multiply attested hadith.
These are considered Dalil Qatari. You have to
believe in them. And Abu Jafar at Hawi,
he mentions the second coming of Isa alayhis
salaam, which means that the sources for it
are very strong.
We have to believe in the second coming
of Isa alaihis salaam.
Even though it might not explicitly be mentioned
in the Quran,
it's multiply attested in Hadith. Multiply attested.
What does multiple attestation mean? What does it
mean for hadith to be?
It means groups and groups of Muslims from
all over the Muslim world are reporting exactly
the same statement from the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasalam which would have made it impossible for
them to have colluded in order to fabricate
a hadith.
It's just true. Right? It's it would be
inconceivable for it to be a lie. Now
in the Quran, actually,
will speak to the people in childhood and
in maturity.
And Ibn Jozi says
that,
right, which is where you get the word
from,
begins at age 35.
So Isa alaihis salam has not yet spoken
Kahlan
as
a mature person
or as an old man sometimes it's translated.
Because he ascended at 33
according to our,
consensus of belief.
Also, the Quran
says
that he is a major sign of the
of the day of judgment. And almost all
of the exegetes of the Quran say this
is an indication of the the second coming
of Isa alaihi salam.
There's there are things in the Quran, but
you're right. It's not explicit. But the hadith
is multiply attested,
so we believe in it. When it comes
to the Mehdi, there is a lot of
weakness,
But we believe in that too.
Right? But there there are some some weaknesses.
There's actually a hadith that says the Mehdi
will not come.
The Mehdi will come when people start saying
there's no Mehdi.
Right? There's another hadith that says,
when the katib stops mentioning the the Dajjal
on the minbar, that's when he's going to
come.
And that's what's happening right now. People are
afraid to talk about these things. They're afraid
to talk, you know, talk about the Dijon
in one eye. What does that mean? And
no, no, my brother. No. Don't talk about
this.
Thank you very much.