Ali Ataie – Split Personality Muslims Who Have Multiple Personality Disorder
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
I usually start soft, so I'll get louder
inshallah to build my confidence a little bit.
In my lecture yesterday, we talked about the
problems and dangers posed by discursive imperialism, a
discourse which, according to Edward Said, attempts to
define our terminology and tell our narrative, in
this case, as Muslims living in the West.
So here's the bottom line.
If the West really wants to understand Islam,
and when I say the West, I'm not
just talking about non-Muslims living in the
West.
The West and Islam is not an absolute
dichotomy.
We have to stop being so binary.
We are the West.
One of my teachers is an American convert.
He was in a Starbucks, and he was
wearing a kufi, and a man in front
of him turned around and said, are you
wearing that thing on your head because you're
a Muslim?
He said, yes.
The man said, you're a traitor.
He walked out.
Since when is Muslim the opposite of American?
What is an American?
What is a Muslim?
If the West really wants to understand this
deen, this way of being in the world,
then it must, we must, acquaint ourselves, we
must acquaint ourselves with our master Muhammad Sallallahu
Alaihi Wa Sallam.
If you don't know the Prophet, then you
don't know the Islamic tradition.
That's the bottom line.
If you don't know the Prophet, you don't
know the Quran.
And anti-Muslim bigots, they know this really
well.
You can call them Islamophobes if you like.
They know this well.
That's why they're constantly trying to assassinate the
Prophet's character, Sallallahu Alaihi Wa Sallam.
It's an age-old tactic.
Strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter.
And if you knew the Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi
Wa Sallam, you would know that his message
is universal.
I am the master of the children of
Adam and I do not boast.
He said, Sallallahu Alaihi Wa Sallam, I am
the master of the children of Adam and
I do not boast.
O people, I am the messenger of Allah
to all of you.
He is the messenger of everyone.
He said, there is nothing in the heavens
and the earth that does not know I
am the messenger of God, except the rebels
from the jinn and inns.
And oftentimes this cosmopolitan aspect of his message
is misrepresented and termed as Islam's global agenda,
right?
This is to create fear.
Who threatens you with fear according to the
Quran is Satan.
That's from Satan.
So this rhetoric of, you know, Muslims are
going to take over the planet.
It's going to be planet of the apes,
right?
They're secretly planning on usurping power from Western
nations, you know, makes for a good miniseries
on Fox, I guess.
We're talking about this yesterday, the effective media
pedagogy.
If television is your main source of religious
education, then you have a problem and you
need to check yourself before you wreck yourself.
I promised a brother yesterday, I'd quote Ice
Cube again in my talk, so I had
to do it early, get it out of
the way.
The Muslims, you know, we're not the ones
meeting once a year at the Bohemian Grove,
the Bilderberg Hotel.
We meet at risk here, and our doors
are open.
We have nothing to hide.
It's complete transparency.
We say, marhaban, ahlan musahlan.
We don't need a trust fund.
We just need an open heart and open
mind, and if they weren't so loud outside,
I'd actually invite the Christians inside and listen,
but mashallah, the man has a voice like
a megaphone, so I don't know if it's
going to be prudent at this juncture.
I made a mistake one time of actually
approaching one of these hardcore evangelical Christians.
It was at a church one time, and
we were having an interfaith dialogue, and when
I walked out, a group of them kind
of just ambushed me, right?
I approached one of them, and she said,
you know, as a woman, so I thought
you'd be more reasonable, and so she says,
your prophet went into Europe and slaughtered all
of the Europeans.
Wow, I don't know who you think my
prophet is, Napoleon or someone.
To know it's very well documented.
I said, oh, he never left the Arabian
Peninsula in the 23 years of his prophecy,
and then she proceeded to quote a verse
to me from the Quran that ostensibly or
apparently advocates violence, so I quoted a verse
to her from the Bible, which apparently advocates
violence out of context, right?
In order to demonstrate her erroneous methodology, so
I quoted from Luke chapter 19, verse 27,
in which Jesus is reported to have said,
those enemies that do not accept me as
their king, bring them hither and slay them
before me, right?
In another translation, cut their throats in my
very presence, and I expected her to say,
well, you're not looking at the context, right?
And then I would say, of course, that
was my point, but she didn't say that.
She said, that verse is nowhere in my
Bible.
So I said, can I see your Bible?
And then I just kind of flipped it
open, and it was right there, and she
closed the book, and she looked at me,
looked down back at the Bible, looked at
me again, and said, I know who you
are, Satan.
Sometimes you have to put the fun in
fundamentalism.
Allah describes the universal aspect of the Prophet's
message when he says, وَمَا أَرْسَلْنَكَ إِلَّا رَحْمَةً
لِّلْعَالَمِينَ Global mercy, not *.
Hearts and minds, not lands and resources.
Universal in the sense that this tradition recognizes
and accepts our distinctiveness with respect to ethnicity,
country, culture, language, clan, tribe.
It also transcends these designations and distinctions by
offering us a unifying spiritual identity called Muslim,
and there's no country called Islamistan, right?
I assure you, there's no Christendom either, right?
I can't tell you how many times I've
been asked, are you Islam?
Or are you from Islam?
So what is a Muslim?
A follower of Muhammad ﷺ, but he himself
was a Muslim.
So how do we deal with that?
The Quran says that the sons of Jacob,
the Bani Israel, they were Muslim.
The Quran says that the disciples of Isa
were Muslim.
This is a transcendental spiritual identity.
So here's what I'm saying.
There's always going to be a level of
hybridity in our identities.
We're all hybrids, and we should embrace that.
Don't fight it.
Embrace it.
Don't think that you have to put yourself
into a box.
Am I Afghan or American?
Am I Indian or Canadian?
Am I Muslim or American?
No, we should forsake this black and white
binary framework.
We find it annoying when people do it
to us.
Why do we do it to ourselves?
Our sisters know about this.
People slowing down their speech because they assume
you're an idiot because you wear a hijab
or you don't understand English, right?
It's very annoying, right?
Or they're, you know, someone's forcing you so
they have pity for you.
Some husbands, some father, some brothers forcing you
because no one in their right mind would
wear a hijab, right?
So they're trying to fit you nicely inside
of a box, but you're not so easily
definable.
You're highly nuanced.
And non-Muslims as well.
We have to be careful in our interactions
with people.
Zayn al-Abideen said, إِنَّ اللَّهَ خَبَعَ وِلَا
يَتَهُ فِي خَلْقِ That Allah has hidden His
Awliya amongst His creation, not بالمسلمين or بين
المسلمين.
In His creation, Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta
-A'la has hid or concealed His friends,
His Awliya.
So we have to be very vigilant as
to how we interact with people, whether they're
Muslim or not.
This is common sense.
So embrace your hybridity, explore it.
There's nothing wrong with being hyphenated.
You can be a Muslim hyphen American or
a American hyphen Muslim, wherever you want to
put your emphasis.
And what does it mean to give precedence
to your faith over your country?
What does that entail?
Is that a bad thing?
I asked five Christian professors at a Christian
seminary.
I said, which of these two takes precedence
in your life?
The fact that you're American or the fact
that you're Christian, which takes precedence?
And five out of five times, with no
hesitation, they said the fact that I'm Christian,
it's obvious.
And what's wrong with that?
Nothing, because they know that their national identity,
their nationalism will ultimately die with their bodies,
right?
But the soul will endure.
The angels in your grave will not ask
you whether you're from the East or the
West, whether you are a Democrat or Republican,
whether you prefer Coke or Pepsi, or whether
you're on team Jacob or team whatever.
I don't even know.
I just expose myself.
Some of these designations are important for the
dunya, but ultimately they will die with your
body.
Man rabuka?
Who is your Lord?
Wama dinuka?
What is your religion?
Waman nabiyuka?
Who is your prophet?
That's it.
Embrace your hybridity, but know that above all,
you are a Muslim.
I am an Iranian-born American, Sunni Muslim,
Hanafi, Ash'ari, whose strongest English, whose strongest
language is English.
Anyone else?
I'm usually the only one in the room.
Wallahi, I've never had, because I hear a
lot of theories out there.
Is he half Jewish?
He's a Kurd.
Wallahi, I've never had an identity crisis.
You wanted to find me?
You can just call me Muslim.
So let's look at some of the best
of exemplars.
The prophet Musa alayhi salam, he was an
Israelite from Bani Israel.
That was his ethnic distinction.
In Exodus chapter 6, we are told that
he's from the Bani Levi, which means a
Levite.
That was his tribal distinction.
He was born in Mitzrayim or Misr in
Egypt.
That's his national distinction.
He spoke ancient Egyptian and ancient Hebrew.
That's his linguistic distinction.
His wife was Zipporah, the daughter of a
Midianite priest.
So his children were half Arab.
Look at the hybridity.
Look at the diversity.
But what was his spiritual distinction?
His spiritual distinction, what was his transcendental identity,
right?
I hope I don't offend anyone with this.
But if we can travel back in time
1,400 years before the common era, some
3,400 years ago, and we can ask
the prophet Musa alayhi salam, I asked him,
are you a Jew?
He would say, no, I'm a Levite.
Because in his day, the word Jew meant
a descendant of Yehuda, of Judah, like David
was from Judah, but Moses is from Levite.
In other words, he would think that I
was referring to a tribal distinction, not the
name of a faith.
If I asked him, are you a practitioner
of Judaism?
He would not know what I was talking
about.
Because this word Judaism as a concept wasn't
coined until the 8th century before the common
era, after the Assyrians attacked the northern kingdom
of Israel in 722, and apparently 10 of
the 12 tribes were wiped out.
The only two tribes that remained were Benjamin
and Judah, and Judah's the older brother, so
they call themselves the Jews.
Our contention is that the spiritual identity, the
spiritual identity of the prophet Musa alayhi salam
was Muslim, one who peacefully submitted to God.
The word Muslim is transcendental, right?
It's anachronistic to call Musa alayhi salam a
Jew.
The prophet Isa alayhi salam, Jesus Christ, who
was born in Bethlehem in Judea, the Roman
occupation, he was raised in Galilee, Nazareth, in
northern Palestine.
He spoke Syriac, which is a language that
the Israelites adopted when they were in captivity
in Babylon.
He also spoke Hebrew, the language of the
synagogue liturgy, and probably spoke Koine Greek, which
was the language of the Roman occupiers.
So there's a lot of hybridity.
Now obviously, the prophet Jesus wasn't a Christian.
The book of Acts tells us that believers
in Jesus were first called Christian when they
were being expelled from the synagogues in Antioch.
It was originally a derogatory term.
The earliest Semitic Christians called themselves Nazareans or
Evionim, right?
And they considered themselves actually a sect of
Judaism.
Our contention is that his spiritual identity, the
spiritual identity, which is overriding everything, was Muslim.
And he says in the Beatitudes, in his
mother tongue, and this is obviously from a
fourth century translation of the Greek manuscripts called
the Peshitta, in his mother tongue, he says,
Blessed are those who make peace.
If you were to translate that into Hebrew,
it would be Blessed are the Mashlimim, which
is the exact cognate of the word Muslim
in the accusative case.
In Judaism, the Nesab or the lineage is
taken from the mother, it's matrilineal, and all
other tribes except for one, a tribe of
Levite, and Maryam is Ufda Harun.
She's a Levite.
She's a descendant of Aaron, of Harun alayhi
salam, right?
He was a first high priest.
The gospel of Luke also says that she
was a Levite.
So in that tribe, tribal distinction is taken
from the father, only in that tribe.
So Isa alayhi salam's tribal distinction would be
whatever his father's was.
But Isa alayhi salam doesn't have a father.
Therefore, Isa alayhi salam, when you think about
it, it's not really from Bani Israel.
He was a messenger sent to the children
of Israel.
This is why he's never quoted in the
Quran as saying, like every other prophet says,
Oh, my people, because their father is from
that people.
But Isa alayhi salam says, So usually when
I make this next comment, and there's a
mixed crowd of Christians and Jews and whatnot,
I say, hold on to your hats and
your hijabs and your hairpieces.
When I tell you that Isa alayhi salam,
Jesus Christ, peace be upon him, was essentially
a Muslim and in the nation of the
prophet, salallahu alayhi wa sallam.
The prophet, salallahu alayhi wa sallam, he was
from a tribe called Quraysh.
His clan was Bani Hashim, spoke Arabic.
But he was in reality a citizen of
the world.
And I believe that he advocated what philosophers
today call a rooted cosmopolitanism.
In other words, to act locally, but think
globally.
To think of something outside of yourself.
Like when he said, Seek knowledge even to
China.
It's thinking outside the box.
But many of us will say, you know,
I don't want to look weird, right?
You know, beard and kufi and hijab, it
just seems weird to me.
You know what's weird to me?
When I was in junior high, there was
a fad, apparently, a trend where you would
wear your clothes backwards.
You guys remember that?
I guess there were some guys, some artists
who were doing that, who wore their clothes
backwards.
That seems really weird, you know?
I don't know if I'm coming or going,
I guess.
I don't know.
Or wearing jeans so tight that you can
tell if a porter in your back pocket
has heads or tails.
This young brother who's, you know, 18, 19
years old, he started growing his beard and
he came to me and he was in
tears and he said, you know, my friends
at school, they made fun of me and
so on and so forth.
I said, you know, brother, one day you're
going to look back at this and you're
going to laugh.
I'm laughing at you already.
You have to put some humor into it.
So weird is actually a matter of perspective.
I mean, there are Christians in the Muslim
world.
You go to some churches in the Muslim
world, you're thinking walking into a masjid.
You see people standing and bowing and prostrating.
They're reciting litanies in Arabic.
You take some of those Christians that are
in contemporary Middle East and you bring them
into like a Joel Osteen convention at the
Staple Center.
You know, this idea of the prosperity gospel.
And those Christians will say, this is so
weird.
What are they doing here?
What are they talking about?
And those are also Christians.
So it's not a Muslim Christian thing.
It's this post-modern opulent lifestyle thing.
That's weird.
For the people of faith, being weird to
the post-modern world is actually a good
thing.
And I'll end with this.
The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, this religion
began as something strange, as something weird.
And then it'll return to be something strange.
We're glad tidings to the strangers.
We're glad tidings to the weirdos.
So it's loving Allah and his messenger is
weird.
And I don't want to be normal.