Ammar Alshukry – Ingredients To A Muslim Identity
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
And his forgiveness, and we seek refuge in
Allah from the evil of ourselves and the
whispering of our desires.
Whom Allah guides, no one can misguide, and
whom he allows to be misled, no one
can guide.
And I bear witness that there is nothing
worthy of worship except Allah alone having no
partners and that Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is
his slave and his messenger
and his perfect worshiper.
To proceed Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala tells us
about a righteous father
and a righteous family that had migrated
from
Muslim lands to a non Muslim land.
And the concern of that father
as he was passing away.
When Yaqub alaihi salam
migrated from the holy land to
Egypt with his family.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says,
When
was being approached by death,
he was surrounded by his kids
and he said, what are you going to
worship after me?
They said we are going to worship your
father.
We are going to worship your lord
and the lord of your fathers, Ibrahim and
Ishmael and his
half. One god, and we are going to
be
in submission to him.
This dua
or this question rather
that Yaqub alaihi salaam makes
is the question that every righteous parent
has to always entertain.
These children of mine,
am I raising
children who are going to worship Allah?
Am I going to be
1, 2, 3 generations down the line?
The Muslim ancestor
of Muslim descendants,
or am I going to be the Muslim
ancestor of non Muslim descendants?
Yaqub alaihis salaam was a prophet
whose son Yusuf was a prophet,
and even then that concern did not leave
him.
That concern did not leave him.
Because that is the concern of the righteous.
And so in this brief
I wanted to share a number of important
ingredients
for a person to instill a Muslim identity
in themselves and in their family.
What are some of these ingredients?
Number 1, the first is
the most important. It's the bedrock, it's the
foundation, it's the us, and that's a person's
aqeedah, their theology.
What do you believe?
And how and where do you get your
morality from?
In a world where every day we are
discussing things that used to be Musa Lamat,
whether they were Musa Lamat, they were things
that were considered to be known by necessity
that something was good and something else was
bad.
And here we see
every day those things that were agreed upon
by not just one society, but by many
societies to be wrong. We see
the prohibition of alcohol, we see the prohibition
of zina, we see the prohibition of LGBT,
we all of these Musa lamaat
that everyday are changing.
And so where do you get your sense
of morality from?
How do you recognize that something is good?
And how do you recognize that something is
bad?
Where do you get your worldview from? That
is the first. And obviously, ours comes from
the Quran and the sunnah of the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
But instilling that in your family
from an early age for them to recognize
that what Allah says
is true is true. And what the prophet
deems is good is good. And what Allah
and his messenger deemed is evil. And what
Allah and his messenger deemed is evil. Is
good.
And what Allah and his messenger deem is
evil, no matter if the entire world considers
it to be good, they're not going to
make that which
is divinely ordained to be evil, to be
good.
So having that faith,
that source
of your belief, that is the first.
The second is your history.
To have an identity is to have a
shared memory.
And that is why even though you may
be closer to Mexico here in Texas,
while you're studying in middle school and high
school, you're probably learning more about what happened
in Boston, what happened in California, the Boston
Tea Party, and the California Gold Rush over
anything that happened in Mexico. Why? Because it
is in the invested interest
of the United States to create a shared
history amongst all of those people who will
identify
as citizens of the United States.
And that is why wherever you go, you
will find that countries
will share and teach their history, that shared
story, that shared memory for every people to
have.
And so a person who wants to have
a shared identity with the Ummah of Muhammad
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam cannot have it if they
don't have a shared memory, if they don't
know their history.
We learned in American history that when the
slaves were brought over from West Africa to
the United States, the first thing, one of
the things that they systemically did was they
removed their sense of history. They changed their
last names.
Because if you don't know who you are,
then it becomes very easy for you to
be told who you are. And so if
a slave knows that they are the children
of scholars, or the children of
businessmen or the children of princes or the
children of warriors, then it's very hard for
you to convince them that they should be
picking cotton in the American South.
And so when you give a person history,
you give a person a sense of identity.
Rather.
He says,
he used to teach his children the of
Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, the seal of the
prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. And used to say,
This is your honor and the honor of
your parents, so don't lose it.
I met
a a kid from Somalia,
American, but he's ethnically Somali. He was doing
a PhD in African Studies.
So I said, why are you doing that?
And he said, when I was in high
school,
this was around 2,012,
that's when Somali pirates were all over the
news.
So he said, one of the kids in
high school, he's being very mean to me.
He said to me, you guys are still
pirates 300 years later, we stopped we stopped
that 300 years ago. Y'all are still So
he said, you guys are so backwards, you're
still pirates. He said, what if Somalis ever
contributed to humanity?
That's the question. He said, you know what
was very hurtful to me
was
The question itself was hurtful, it was rude,
it was mean, but what was more hurtful
was that I didn't have an answer for
him.
And how many of us
are young, walk around, and they have no
sense of history. You're told be proud to
be Muslim, but they don't know what that
means.
But not only that, they don't know about
the history of the Sahaba, they don't know
about the history of the Umayyads, they don't
know about the Abbasis, they don't know about
Al Andres, they don't know about Al Murabitun.
They don't know anything about our history, and
they're told to be proud
in their Islamic identity. But I'll tell parents
this also.
It's not enough that your children also have
the general history of the Muslim world, but
that they have your particular history.
What town are you from? Who are their
grandparents?
What country
do what are the unique qualities of the
country that they're from?
That you inspire them and that you instill
in them that identity because young people are
always looking for an identity. If you're not
giving it to them, they're going to seek
it from somewhere else.
I was once walking
in my village in Sudan, may Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala free it and protected.
And I was walking
with a young boy,
and we were in a village that had
no electricity, the electricity was out, we were
walking in the dark.
And there was a dog that was barking,
and the boy was 8 years old, very
very young.
And I said to him, are you scared?
Because we heard the the dog barking.
And he said to me,
He said, you want me to be afraid?
He said, my my
grandfather killed a lion.
And I was thinking to myself, what lions
do we have in this area? We don't
have lions.
But that story
that he knows
about his grandfather or great grandfather, whoever that
is, was a source of confidence and a
courage for an 8 year old boy.
Parents, I know at times you're talking your
history to your kids and it doesn't seem
like they're listening,
but you continue to do it and have
patience because what you are doing is you're
giving them a gift that they'll never be
able to have after you, and that's the
gift of identity.
The third ingredient
is
language. Language. We see it all the time.
Language is part of a person's identity.
During iftar in every masjid in the United
States, those who speak Arabic go and they
sit together, and those who speak English go
and they sit together, and those who speak
French, they go and they sit together, and
those who speak Urdu, they go and they
sit together. It is a very easy way
and natural way for people to connect with
one another. But not only that, language becomes
a reason and an access for you to
to be able to to to to learn
your history in the first place.
Otherwise, you're limited by the English library. And
many of our cultures, and many of our
countries,
our history is not recorded in the English
language, or it is not recorded sufficiently in
the English language. And so when I learn
my language, I'm not only able to communicate
with my people, but I'm also able to
access a history
that will inspire me and give me an
identity.
The last thing that I'll mention
in the 4th
is simply a confidence.
Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam he says,
The prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said Islam began
as something strange
and it returned, it will return to being
strange.
Glad tidings to the strangers. And he said
that the strangers in another narration, he says
those are the ones
who become upright when the people are corrupt.
And what that means
at times is that you have to have
a resilience as a community.
You have to have a resilience in your
personalities,
that it's okay if we're strange.
You don't have to fit in all the
time. You know, I remember the first time
I went to Austin, Texas, I was amazed
their slogan is, keep Austin weird.
Portland, Oregon, the same thing, keep Portland weird.
Like we're okay being weird, we're okay being
different. We don't have to be as American
as apple pie. We don't have to become
mainstream in everything that we do. We can
be comfortable in our otherness, we can be
comfortable in our values, and that we become
proud of what we have if we are
different in a way that pleases Allah
and his messenger, especially if the people around
us become corrupt, that you become comfortable in
your own skin.
So So these are the 4 things that
I briefly wanted to share with you. There's
more to be shared, but we'll end here.
We ask Allah to allow us to hear
the speech and follow the best of it.
We ask Allah to accept from us
our prayers for our brothers and sisters in
Palestine and in Sudan. We ask Allah
to uplift from them their besiegement. We ask
Allah
to heal their injured and to accept their
martyrs. We ask Allah
to remove
the the war from Palestine and from Sudan.
We ask Allah
to heal their injured and to reunite their
loved ones with their families. And we ask
those who have passed away and those who
have been killed that they be raised to
the highest of heavens with prophets and the
martyrs and the righteous and the truthful, and
what excellent companions are those?
I'm gonna do the Okay.
So feet to feet, shoulder to shoulder, lean
away. They find it.
A couple of quick announcements
I gotta, like, stand over here.
So So number 1, tonight we have Friday
night lights, Insha'Allah Ta'ala, at 8:20 PM. I'll
be doing a
session called heroes and villains which will be
about
different my goal is to go over a
number of,
evil people as well. A lot of times
people talk about the akhira,
the the the the akhira, but nobody talks
about the ishira. And Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
says,
He says,
He says, And that you may know the
path of the evildoers as well.
And so today we'll be talking about Musa
versus Fir'aun inshaAllah ta'ala at Friday night lights.
Number 2, tonight after isha at 9:45
pm, we'll have our youth
for all youth ages 14 and above.
Number 3, we'll be having a water games
day. Water games day is a big day
every year.
And the summer bazaar, it will be tomorrow.
So water games day will be tomorrow insha'Allah
ta'ala
from 5:30 to 8:30 pm. Fun and activities
for the entire family.
Food will be available for purchase.
So,
if you don't bring your kids, they're probably
gonna be upset with you, when they hear
from their other friends. So, make sure you
bring your family
tomorrow. Number 4, today is the last day
for online registration for our elm tree summer
program for kids ages 5 to 16. Please
check our website and social media pages for
the registration link.
Number 5, Emerge registration is closing soon for
high school young men, ages 14 to 17.
Participants will enjoy private classes with Sheikh Waleed,
Sheikh Kamal, and our team of college mentors.
So please check our website and social media
pages for the registration link and more information.
Number 6, early voting for the Harris Central
Appraisal District runoff elections is June 3 to
11. Election date is June 15th. The nearest
polling station is the Freeman Library.
Number 7, please donate to the masjid, your
contribution is still needed.
Brothers and sisters in Islam,
the title of our Khutba today is
Concerning this verse,
Ibn Abbas said it
means which means
the verse is saying, what is the matter
of you that what is the matter with
you that you do not fear the greatness
of Allah?
And Allah
doesn't mean much to you, does not have
much weight with you.
So it's about recognizing the greatness of Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
And how much are we in need of
this reminder?
Our hearts have been saturated with the love
of this world
to the point that it has affected our
worship and affected our relationship with Allah Azzawajal.
We've
become
attached to materialism,
drowned in desires, and shrouded in doubt.
What is amazing
is that you will see inanimate objects,
and they would react better to the greatness
of Allah
and to his words them than some hearts
do, and then some hearts of the believers
of the Muslims would.
Because mountains and solid rocks would crumble as
Allah says.
If we had sent down this Quran on
a mountain,
then you would certainly have seen it falling
down and splitting apart
because of the fear of Allah. Yeah. And
the mountain of solid
rock
would
crumble
out of the fear of Allah and from
the words of Allah
And there are some hearts
harder than those rocks. The Quran has less
effect on them than those rocks.
In Surat Al Hajj, Allah says,
In this verse, Allah
says, do you not see that Allah
is the one that is obeyed
and
is prospered to by all that are in
the heavens
and all that are in the earth and
the sun and the moon and the stars
and the mountains and the trees and the
animals,
and then it doesn't say and the people.
It said,
and many people.
Of all of these creatures of Allah
all of them are a 100% obeying Allah.
All of them are a 100%
submitting to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. But the
human beings, not all, many of them.
We're coming last in every area.
The mountain is reacting better than our hearts
to the Quran.
The inanimate objects and the animals, they're all
reacting better, submitting better to Allah
That the 7 heavens declare His glory, and
the Earth as well, and those that are
in them. And there's not a single thing
except that it glorifies
him with praise, except that you do not
understand their glorification.
In this hadith,
you see how the angels recognize the greatness
of Allah
And Nabi sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said,
in another narration,
I see that which you do not see,
and I hear that which you do not
hear.
And then he said,
the heavens creaked just like when you put
weight on something and it creaks from the
weight, or
your wooden stairs when you put your weight
on it and you hear it creak.
And rightfully so that it would creak. Then
the Prophet describes,
There is not the space of 4
fingers, and another narration mentions a hand span.
Look at the size of the heavens.
This space, there is not the space of
4 fingers except that there is an angel
prostrating to Allah
Four fingers space, next time there's an angel
making sujood to Allah or making ruku to
Allah or standing in prayer to Allah
the other narration mentions they have been doing
so ever since Allah created them.
How many millions and millions and millions of
years these angels have been praying nonstop,
they don't stop to sleep or rest, their
minds don't wander, they don't think of business
and trade, and they've been worshiping Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala like this non stop, and they
will continue to do so until the horn
is blown into to announce the day of
judgement.
And when they hear that, the first thing
they will say is, oh Allah, we have
not worshiped you enough.
After all this, oh Allah, we have not
worshiped you enough. And now someone prays Duhr
and thinks he did a great favor to
Allah, a sujal. And that's why the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam taught us that the
first thing we say when the salah is
over is astaghfirullah
3 times. And some of the scholars said,
that so that you were saying, yeah, Allah,
this salah I just presented to you is
not worthy and not befitting of your greatness
and your majesty. So that the believer never
becomes arrogant feeling that they've presented enough to
Allah Azza wa Jal.
The angels know the greatness of Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala.
There's a hadith, and we're just abbreviating for
time, but there's a hadith in which
Nabi salallahu alaihi wa sallam is describing
how the angels react when Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala speaks a decree.
How the angels how do the heavens shake,
and every angel in the heavens will fall
down in sujood, and they will remain in
sujood
until Jibril is the first one to lift
his head. Then he goes to Allah
who informs him of the decree. Then he
goes heaven by heaven, and only when Jibril
comes to that heaven do the angels lift
their head and ask what did Allah
reveal.
But when Allah spoke, the angels fell down
in sujood and wouldn't lift their heads. The
angels understand the greatness of Allah
so they understand the place of Allah
In this hadith, narrated by al Bayhaqid,
An Nabi is
standing
and talking to Jibreel.
And before
we continue,
who is Jibreel?
He is the leader of the angels, of
the most powerful of the angels. He is
Shadid al Khuwa, the most powerful, Dhumira.
So this is Jibreel, and he's standing in
human form, of course, talking to the prophet
So the prophet said,
then the, like, they have been split up
like this. The sky opened up, and an
angel started to descend.
But then the Prophet was about to ask
Jibreel, who is this Angel that's coming down?
But he was distracted by something else. He
said,
So he says, Jibril then started to almost,
like, collapse upon himself and get close to
the ground.
Shadi al Khoa, the most powerful of the
angels,
he got so scared,
he starts to, like, almost, like, cower, like,
shrink
and and collapse upon himself and get closer
and closer to the ground because of seeing
this angel.
Then the angel came and asked the Prophet
some questions and Nabi salallahu alaihi wasallam answered
and then he left. And then the prophet
salallahu alaihi wasallam says to Jibril, I wanted
to ask you who this angel was, but
I was distracted by what I saw of
you. Like, why were you behaving that way?
So then Jibril goes at length describing the
different tasks that this angel is in is
in charge of, and one of them is
that he's very close to the preserved tablet,
and he when Allah allows him, he will
read what's in it, and then he will
pass that information on.
And one of the things he is
related to
is the day of judgment.
So he says,
Jibril is saying, and I thought
that he came down
because the day of judgment is starting.
Jibril alaihi salam is saying, what you saw
of me,
me cowering and almost collapsing,
is my fear from the day of judgment.
Jibril, alayhis salam,
is not held accountable on the day of
judgment.
There he there is not a chance. There
is no fear there and or an end
a possible a possibility of him ending in
paradise or the hellfire. There's
not a challenge for him on the day
of judgment.
But he was almost collapsing upon himself because
he thought the day of judgment is starting,
and he's afraid of the day of judgment
even though there's no judgment for him. And
there's no threat of him ending up in
the hellfire,
And this was his reaction to the day
of jib. That's why we said,
The angels,
they understand the position of Allah. They understand
the greatness of Allah
What is the matter with you that you
do not fear and recognize the greatness of
Allah? And indeed He has created you in
stages. What does that have to do with
anything?
He created you in stages. Because your humble
beginning you talk about the greatness of Allah,
and your humble slash lowly beginning. So
it's even
more of a reason for you to see
the greatness of Allah
Do you not see how Allah
created the 7 heavens, one above the other?
And he made the moon in it a
light, and he made the sun
a lamp. And again, this is the Prophet
if the if anyone says the Prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam wrote the Quran, look at
this fine distinction. The moon is a light,
but the sun is a lamp, a siraj,
because the sun provides heat, and the moon
only reflects the light of the heat. So
it's just a lamp a light.
And
and Allah made you grow out of the
earth,
a true growth.
Then he returns you to it, then he'll
bring you forth a new beginning or a
new bringing forth.
If we felt the greatness of Allah
how heavy would our sins be?
Now we just justify,
we explain away, we don't agree with the
ruling in Islam. Allah doesn't exist. Islam is
false.
He says that the the believer sees his
sins as if he's sitting under a huge
mountain that's hovering above them, and it can
fall and collapse upon them at any minute.
Yeah. And right now, if for the rest
of your day, there was literally a mountain
over you, and it could fall at any
minute. Like, how would you enjoy the rest
of your day? But then he describes
the the hypocrite.
They their sins to them are just like
a fly that landed on their nose.
That's it.
That's it. Though they never stress about it,
it's over.
A fly set on your nose, you
you you flung it away, and that's it.
No one cares.
Imam Mukai
said, from the
and from the effects of the sins or
the punishment of committing sins, and
that it weakens the heart,
it it weakens in the heart to.
It weakens in your heart the greatness of
Allah. And how great is Allah in your
heart becomes weaker because of committing sins.
We'll conclude,
here
ask
for his forgiveness.
Indeed, those who ask for his forgiveness shall
prosper.
He was one of the Mufasireen of the
Quran, and he was sitting with a group
of people, and they were near the sea.
So he said, Alhamdulillah,
he's about to start speaking. They said, so
we knew he's going to give us an
admonition.
He says, the people who drown
in this sea, they will die, and then
the fish
will eat their flesh.
And then the waves will carry their bones
until they put them somewhere on the shore.
Then the sun will come and dry these
bones, and then the camels will come and
eat these bones and transfer them into dung.
Then a group of travelers will come and
use that dung for,
their fire, and then their ashes will be
scattered in the wind. And then when the
horn is blown
on the day of judgment,
They will be standing looking around. This is
the verse that where Allah describes when the
horn is blown into, the first thing that
happens
well,
what the effect is, people are brought back
to life
and
they're looking around like they are completely conscious,
same body,
same life, and they're aware that they were
dead, and they're aware that they're back a
100%. They know it's not a dream. They
know this is reality
because they're in a world of Haqq with
Allah
He says, so those people those people who
drowned in the sea, and their bones were
eaten, and then they were turned into dung,
and then there were ashes blown in the
wind, They will emerge in the same way.
Not they're not any harder or any more
difficult, but in the same way they will
emerge just like the people in the graves
will emerge.
And that's why Allah says in the Quran,
Like, where will you go? Where can you
escape?
There's no one that will escape the day
of judgment. There is no one who will
skip it. There's not a person who will
will be forgotten to be called up or
someone will be forgotten on earth while everyone
else is is taken somewhere else.
Where will you escape?
And that's why it behooves us to be
a judge over our own actions.
Do we
live like people who really feel the greatness
of Allah,
and do we transfer that to our family
and to our children?
Our job is to examine our lives, see
what we can change, and what we can
eliminate for the sake of Allah
With With that, we ask Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala to make us of those who recognize
the truth as a clear truth and follow
the best of it. And to make us
of those who recognize falsehood as a clear
falsehood and abstain from
it.
I'm gonna read the announcement. So tonight, join
us tonight for Friday night lights
at 8:20 PM with Sheikh Amaru Shukri.
We're gonna be starting a series of talks
about heroes and villains. Tonight is episode 1.
It's gonna be Musa versus Quran. Musa alayhi
salaam verse Quran. Immediately after Anishad 9:45 will
be our youth. Halakah with myself for all
ages, youth all ages 8,
14 and up.
We'll we're gonna be having water games day
and summer bazaar tomorrow. So 2 events in
1. The summer bazaar will be indoors. Water
games will be outside for youth. Yeah. I
mean, for youth male and female. We're gonna
have a few a lot of huge water
slides,
about 3,000 water balloons,
food, and all kinds of things. So that's
tomorrow
from 5:30 to 8:30 PM.
And, today's the last day for online registration
for our entry summer program for kids ages
5 to 16.
See our website and social media pages for
the registration link.
And
emerge
our team and our team of college mentors.
Please check our website and the other stuff.
Early voting for the Harris
Central Appraisal District runoff elections is June
3rd through June 11th. Election day is June
15th. Nearest polling station is the Freeman Library.
Last but not least, please donate to the
masjid. Your contribution is needed.