Ali Ataie – The Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) Founder of the World’s Most Tolerant Faith
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
I usually start soft, so I'll get louder.
I have 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 economy. 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 the
man in front of him turned around and
said, are you wearing that thing on your
head because you're a Muslim?
And 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
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
wasallam, you would know that his message is
universal.
He said,
I'm the master of the children of Adam,
and I do not boast.
He
is a messenger of everyone.
He said, there is nothing in the heavens
and the earth that does not know I'm
the messenger of God,
except the rebels from the jinn and ins.
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 gonna take over the
planet.
It's gonna be planet of the apes.
Right? They're secretly planning on usurping power from
Western Nations.
You know, it 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 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 Billeberg Hotel.
We meet at at risk here, and our
doors are open.
We have nothing to hide.
It's complete transparency.
We
say, you don't need a trust fund.
You just need an open heart and an
open mind.
And if they weren't so loud outside, I'd
actually invite the Christians inside
and listen, but, masha'Allah, the man has a
voice like a megaphone.
So I don't know if it's going to
be prudent at this juncture.
And I made a mistake one time of
actually approaching
one of these hardcore evangelical Christians.
I 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? So
I approached one of them and she said,
you know, it was a woman, so I
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 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 has reported to have
said, those enemies that do not accept me
as their king,
bring them hither and slay them before me.
Right? And 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 kinda 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 and
fundamentalism.
Allah
describes
the universal
aspect of the prophet's message when he says,
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?
Right? So what is a Muslim? A follower
of Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam, 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 Alaihi Salam
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
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
they have they have pity for you. Some
some husbands, some father,
some brothers forcing you, because no one in
their right mind would wear 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 most non Muslims as well.
We have to be careful in our interactions
with people. Zaynu Abideen said
that Allah has hidden
his auliya amongst his creation, not
In his creation,
Allah
has hid or concealed
his his friends, his aulia. 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 wanna
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 5 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 5 out of 5
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 I don't even know.
I
just exposed myself.
Some of these designations are important for the
dunya,
but ultimately, they will die with your body.
Manra Bucca. Who is your lord? Waman Dinuka.
What is your religion? Waman Nabiuka.
Who is your prophet? That's it. Embrace your
hybridity, but know
but know
that that above all,
you are a Muslim.
I am
an Iranian born
American,
Sunni Muslim, Hanafi Ashari, 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?
Is he or was he he's a he's
a Kurd. Well,
I have never had an identity crisis.
You want to define me? You could just
call me Muslim. So So let's look at
some of the best of exemplars.
The prophet Musa alaihi salaam,
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 Mysore 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 could travel back
in time,
1400 years before the common era, some 34
100 years ago,
And we can ask the prophet Musa, alaihis
salam,
if 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 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 2 tribes that remained
were Benjamin and Judah. And Judah is the
older brother, so they call themselves
the Jews. Our contention
is that the spiritual identity
the spiritual identity of the prophet Musa alaihi
salaam
was Muslim, one who peacefully submitted to God.
The word Muslim is transcendental.
Right? It's
it's anachronistic
to call Musa alaihi salaam
a Jew.
The prophet Isa alaihi salaam,
Jesus
Christ, who was born in Beit Elakim,
in Judea,
the Roman occupation.
He was raised in, Galilee,
Nazareth,
in Northern Palestine. He spoke Syriac, which is
the 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 call themselves Nazareans or Evionim.
Right?
And they consider 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 4th 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 Hashlimim, which is the exact
cognate of the word Muslim in the accusative
case.
In Judaism, the nasaab or the lineage is
taken from the mother, it's matrilineal.
And all other tribes except for 1, a
tribe of Levi. And Maryam is Uftah Harun.
She's a Levite. She's a descendant of of
Aaron, of Harun, alaihis salaam. Right? He was
the 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 alaihi salam's tribal
distinction would be whatever his father's was. But
Isa alaihi salam doesn't have a father. Therefore,
Isa alaihi 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, You kawmi, like every other
prophet says,
oh my people, because their father is from
that people. But Isa alaihi salam says, You
bani Israel.
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 Risa alaihi Salam,
Jesus Christ peace be upon him, was essentially
a Muslim,
and in the nation of the prophet, sallallahu
alaihi wasallam.
The prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasallam,
he was from a tribe
called Quresh.
His clan was Bani Hashit,
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, sticking outside the
box.
So many of us will say, you know,
I don't wanna I don't wanna look weird.
Right?
No beard and the kufi
and hijab is it just seems weird to
me. You know what's weird to me? When
I was in junior high, it was a
fad, apparently
a trend where you would wear your clothes
backwards.
You guys remember that?
I guess there were some
guys, some 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 quarter in your back pocket
is heads or tails.
This young brother who's, you know, 18, 19
years old, he he, he started growing his
beard. And he 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 think you're 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
postmodern, opulent
lifestyle thing that's weird. For the people of
faith,
being weird to the postmodern world is actually
a good thing. And I'll end with this.
The prophet said,
in Nadina Badahariban,
this religion began as something strange,
as something weird.
And it'll it'll return to be something
strange.
Glad tidings to the strangers or glad tidings
to the weirdos.
So if loving Allah and his messenger
is weird,
then I don't wanna be normal.