Bilal Philips – Foundation Of Islamic Culture
AI: Summary ©
The segment discusses the cultural aspect of the Sharia law, including the foundation of the culture based on the Sharia law and the use of sports and culture in various countries. The "war machine" is a culture of fear and discomfort, while the "monster culture" is a culture of fear and discomfort. The "war machine" is a culture of fear and discomfort, while the "monster culture" is a culture of fear and discomfort. The "war machine" is a culture of fear and discomfort, while the "monster culture" is a culture of fear and discomfort.
AI: Summary ©
Over the last weeks month
the oma
has been bleeding. an open wound.
A recently opened wound
in Gaza.
But it is a wound among many
who are bleeding in Iraq
or bleeding Nevada, Stan.
bleeding in touch, Chechnya,
bleeding in Mindanao,
bleeding in the for bleeding all over the world.
The oma is bleeding.
This situation
for most of us,
is incomprehensible.
to really put our finger on what is at the bottom of all of this. For most of us, it is unclear.
We don't really know what is behind it all.
But it is very important for us to understand
what is at the bottom. Why, because this scenario, Gaza, is in Pakistan,
it is in Egypt, it is in Nigeria, it is everywhere,
either on a smaller scale, or potentially ready to erupt.
There is an international struggle going on.
Because of the fact that the oma is split up into bits and pieces, we are only able to see it on a national level.
But reality, if we were to step back and look at the whole problem, we will see that it is confined to our oma
the fact that it is happening to our oma in various parts means that this is not something accidental,
it is something which is planned something which is deliberated and is being implemented systematically.
And if we are not able to understand what is at the root of it, it will eventually overcome us all.
If a law permits it to happen.
So, what is then at the root of it.
The root
is
a cultural struggle.
There is a culture
a world culture today
Western culture,
the globalized culture
and this culture has its own understanding of right and wrong of good and evil.
And it is promoting itself at the expense of all other cultures.
Culture is at the root of it all.
But if one were to ask,
we all hear the term culture and we all know the term culture but then what is culture?
culture
actually refers to
the element that human beings add to what is natural.
the natural world in which we live. There are certain things that we do naturally.
We didn't add it. It was already there.
Sleeping nobody had to teach us to sleep. It
Nobody had to teach us to eat,
and so on and so forth. There are physical elements, natural elements, which are not considered culture, because they're everywhere. It's the same. However, on top of that, we add other factors. How do you sleep, everybody has to sleep. But the way in which you sleep now, is where the element of the culture comes in. Your parents taught you as a child sleep this way. Your parents taught you to eat this way. We as Muslims, we sleep on our right side, we don't sleep on our stomachs.
We eat with our right hand, we don't eat with our left hand. This is culture.
other cultures say doesn't matter. You sleep anywhere you want to sleep, stomach back anywhere. You eat any way you want to eat hands, feet, whatever.
That's another culture. Our culture teaches this. Now, of course, we're not bleeding in Gaza, because of the way we sleep or the way we eat.
This is not what is at the bottom of it.
But it is all interrelated.
The eating and sleeping in a particular way is only one of the elements of our culture. And what is that culture, our culture, our culture is the Islamic culture.
It has a foundation,
which is based on Revelation.
Revelation, which we address as we speak about as Sharia law,
Sharia.
This is the foundation of our culture,
the correct Islamic culture.
Of course, our culture today might be mixed up with a bunch of other things which have nothing to do with the Sharia. But in general, around the world, there is that thread which links it all together.
The shediac culture
reality today is that after the period of European dominance of the Muslim world,
from Spain 1492
the fall of Spain,
the discovery of America,
Europe began to spread,
conquering Muslim lands, subject subjugating them, enslaving the peoples, etc.
and
500 600 years have passed.
That dominance was overt initially,
then the 20th century,
the colonial powers Germany, France, UK, Russia, pulled back the open dominance and left after some generations, those who they had trained to carry on their policies.
by proxy,
they didn't need to be there anymore, they could go back and those who they trained could continue the process of cultural dominance.
And that culture, as we said, is Western culture. The media has spread that culture on an even higher level than was possible in the past.
And you will see the culture in a variety of different ways.
If you open up National Geographic magazine dedicated to anthropological sociological scientific research.
Usually they have articles on various peoples in different parts of the world.
And they will have articles on primitive peoples and modern peoples. Now if you go into the section on primitive peoples, you see an hour
Typical, for example, on South America, the Amazon,
where you have people living as they did
1000 years ago, still running around and little strips of cloth on themselves, mostly naked, whatever.
And
still using the same method of hunting with bows and arrows, and this they have their food and spirits to get the fish.
But when you look at the pictures that they show,
you will see surprisingly enough, some of them wearing baseball caps
looks very odd
baseball cap in the middle of the Amazon
or they show you Mongolia, where the Mongols came from.
People still riding around on horses main transport this horses.
And you see these horsemen they have this very small horses that they ride on a particular breed of horses, and you see them riding. And you look closely, you see they're wearing trainers with stripes on it Nike and Adidas.
And they show you pictures of Borneo
that you jungles of Borneo
where people are still living in tree houses of places where people still live in houses, built in trees.
And they show you pictures within the family sitting around eating on the floor of the House on the tree. And there is a boy sitting there with a T shirt. It's got Coca Cola written on it. Where did that come from?
This is that culture.
That culture which has reached the most remote areas and touched the most remote areas.
And though we might say what the big deal about Nike and Coca Cola and baseball caps.
They are the elements they are the outer elements of the culture, which has its own worldview, its own concepts. It's the concepts that are behind it, that are really dangerous, not so much the cap or the Nike or the T shirt. It's it's what's behind it. That is really dangerous.
And
a famous writer who died recently, Harvard University Professor by the name of Samuel P. Huntington,
who was advisors and Advisor to the President of the US
in the main think tanks.
He summed up the cultural clash which is happening in the world. In his book, he had a book called clash of civilizations, which caused a big stir.
Mostly rejected by people, as it seemed to
seem sort of
fatalistic, you know, there was Doom coming and there is no way around it. Anyway.
He's stated,
at one point in the book,
that the underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism.
So this is what we hear all the time. The main problem is Islamic fundamentalism. For example, New York Times had an article in the 90s in the New York Times is one of the widely most widely read newspapers in the US and around the world. It said there, this article said Muslim fundamentalism is fast becoming the chief threat to global peace and security, as well as the cause of national and local disturbances through terrorism.
It is akin to the menace posed by Nazi ism and fascism in the 1930s. And then by communism in the 1950s.
That is the general view. But Huntington said, it is not Islamic fundamentalism.
It is Islam.
It is Islam itself.
A different civilization.
Who speaks
People are convinced of the superiority of their culture, and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.
A different civilization different from what different from Western civilization,
whose people are convinced of the superiority of the culture, any Muslim anywhere in the world?
If he is asked, What is the best
way of life, they're going to say Islam.
Maybe he's not practicing it.
Maybe he really doesn't even know it properly. But he's going to say this law, this is something that Muslims are convinced about wherever they are in the world, the vast majority, not to say they're not those who are also not convinced, you know, who are Muslims in name and our other problems, but the massive Muslims are convinced of this.
And they are obsessed with the inferiority of their power
in our times, the rumblings that exist in the Muslim world today,
after experiencing failure,
with the systems that had been placed on the Muslim world, those rumblings amongst the various Muslim movements, etc, which are calling to bring back the Sharia.
Let the Sherry go forth and guide our lives. This call it is there rumbling bubbling under the surface.
It doesn't accept that superior power that is dominating.
And then he looked at the other side of the coin, and he said,
the problem for Islam
is not the CIA.
CIA is the Central Intelligence Agency, is the secret service of the USA,
which is famous for what for interfering in people's governments and assassinations and all kinds of things.
The history is there, CIA and its activities.
But he said That's not the problem.
Nor is it the US Department of Defense. Who is that?
The war machine?
The military, of course, is not what we're seeing in Iraq.
It's not what we're seeing and understand is not what's behind Israel, the war machine.
They're satellites, helping the Israelis guide their rockets, so that they can kill whoever they wish at will.
But he said, No, this is not the main problem. This is not where the problem really lies.
He said
it is the West.
The problem for Islam is the West, a different civilization,
whose people are convinced of the universality of their culture.
People are convinced of the universality of their culture.
What does that mean? They mean that everybody should be like they are
because their culture is superior. Where does this idea of superiority come from? Darwinism.
Darwinism, which talks about people evolving.
This part of it is not about whether they we came from apes or not. I mean, that's the base of Darwinism that we evolved from apes.
But then after we evolved from apes, we ended up on a
pyramid in the world.
Some people at the bottom and some people at the top.
Those who are at the top were there because of what they call natural selection.
They're at the top because they had superior qualities, which put them up at the top. And that's where the first world is. Western civilization.
And the rest of the world is called what
The third world, you don't even hear about the second world, right? They live a big gap there, they have the first world and the third world.
They're on top because they are superior, meaning that not only are they superior as a people, but everything that they have evolved in their society is superior to everybody else's.
So this is a mentality,
a way of thinking, a way of looking at worldview.
And hunter dung goes on to say that this different civilization, whose people are convinced of the universality of the culture, believe that they're superior, if declining power imposes on them the obligation to impose that culture, culture throughout the world,
they believe it is their duty, to impose their culture on the rest of the world.
The third world culture is inferior, they're superior, it is their duty,
to impose their culture so that we can evolve up to where they are. This is the rationale. This is the essence of the cultural struggle, which is out there.
So this is
the essence of what we have to be conscious of
two different world cultures today.
One Western,
which has dominated the third world to such a degree, that its essential principles are followed by the third world
without any question anymore.
The essential principle
of Western culture is secular democracy.
It is secular democracy.
And if we look around the world today,
the biggest nations, India
has accepted secular democracy. China has accepted secular democracy, Russia, even in the times of communism, was secular democracy.
The Muslim world may have
all kinds of dictatorships and autocratic rules and all these other kinds of things.
But
the root, the people of the country, of the Muslim countries still believe in the Sharia,
the leading thinkers of the Muslim world who are their scholars,
they're another bodies of thinkers who are the intelligentsia who are trained etc, by Western
forces. But the one which the Muslim or Mallard leans towards wants to know what they're saying, eventually, are the scholars Muslim scholars, and the Muslim scholars are clear
that the only way for Muslims is Sharia.
They can never accept secular democracy.
It is Sharia.
So with that,
struggle,
then
Muslims will find themselves
at the end of the war machine,
from Western civilization, trying to force that culture on us
militarily
and intellectually.
Many of our countries now
have their syllabus. The syllabus is being used in the schools, Islamic schools, etc. are now being reviewed.
To be revised, to be neutralized, to be changed.
To be able to accept
secular democracy.
This is the struggle. This is at the bottom of the struggle, and we need to be conscious of it.
I asked the last one to Allah to awaken the oma to this great threat, which threatens its own existence as a law to protect the oma from the attacks taking place in its body today to protect the online Eliza, the oma in Iraq, in Afghanistan and elsewhere. ask Allah to forgive muslims for their inaction, for their splintering amongst themselves, their inability to work together to resolve the crisis amongst them. ask Allah to forgive our brothers and sisters fighting for his cause throughout the world, to give them success, and to make them a source of guidance for the rest of us to fulfill our responsibility to allow us $1 ask Allah to forgive all of us our sins, and call on you all to
turn to him and seek His forgiveness because no forgiveness comes except from him. hamdu Lillah wa salatu salam ala rasulillah All praises you to a lot of Peace and blessings beyond the last messenger of Allah.
As I said earlier,
we are in a cultural struggle.
One which prophet muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam addressed when he said in the my birth to live with me, Mama, Karima Clark, I was only sent to perfect for you the highest of moral character traits.
He laid the foundation for Islamic culture
for the culture, which should
guide Muslims wherever they may be.
That is the culture which defines for us right and wrong, good and evil. It is a culture based on Revelation.
Revelation, which is the only true guide, the only absolute and certain guide,
that revelation remains amongst us.
Islam
as evidence for humankind until the last day of this world,
it is a moral message,
a moral message, whose implications are manifest in all of the aspects of human society and living.
It is our duty to implement that message.
That message begins with the Pillars of Islam and the man
and extends to all aspects of our society.
All of the elements and the means which allow has put before us to protect that message, to spread it, Jihad being at its peak,
but jihad in accordance with its principles.
Brothers and sisters,
I call on you to reflect on the role of Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Sallam in establishing our culture.
That Islamic culture which we need to go back to,
because
the means to
repel. What is happening in the Muslim world today lies essentially in us going back to that culture.
And Prophet Muhammad wa sallam in one of his statements speaking about the time to come,
had said
when the time comes,
that your business dealings are
rife with interest.
And you become
attached to this material world.
And you forget jihad in the way of a la
sala de la la cuando la
law will put upon you humiliation.
humiliation in your countries in your families
like a shadow, a dark shadow over the whole oma,
which Allah will not lift, had that urge to in identical until you return to your religion.
This is what is in front of us.
We cannot go to Gaza, we cannot go to Afghanistan, we cannot go to Iraq, we can go to the various parts of the Muslim world that are suffering today. But what we can do
is we can go back to Islam
to go back and establish Islam in our lives and in the lives of those around us.
And it will have an effect.
One might think, well, what's the What can I do? Well, that little that you do with others doing that little, it will have a ripple effect, and it will begin the process of changing the oma.
As the law said,
in the law hieromartyr Coleman had a rule maybe unfussy him that the law will not change the conditions of our people until they change which is that which is within themselves, he will not change it from good to bad.
nor will he change it from bad to good. Until we make that change, until we become committed, sincerely committed to making that change in our lives. Going back to Islam, then, no matter how much we scream about, no matter how much we cry about, no matter how much we write about, it will not change. Until we change.
I asked the last one to Allah, to put a desire for change in our hearts. And to make that desire real. And to give us the strength and the courage to do the things which will fulfill that desire. I ask a lot to change the hearts of the Muslims, the Muslim on my hair and elsewhere. Ask a lot to change it for the better. And to give them success in changing the world around them. Ask a lot to give us the blessing of being those who will carry this message of Islam to the rest of the world. ask Allah to give us the blessing of having implemented Islam in our lives. And to give the last breath to us. The breath La ilaha illa Allah
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