Hamzah Wald Maqbul – College Spirituality Activism Means Ends FOSIS 2017 Leicester UK 07142017
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Please
forgive me. I
got on
a flight from Chicago
last night that was supposed to take me
to London,
but ended up taking me to Manchester.
And so I have come here
after continuously traveling the entire night
by way of Huddersfield
of all places.
I have
a unique and interesting part of my personality
that I can function for several days
without sleep,
But the less I sleep,
the less inhibited I feel in saying what
I wish to say, which is
not always a good thing, but it does
make for interesting talks.
I was the
president of the MSA of our university,
which was one of the largest public universities
in,
the United States of America had a student
body,
of over 3,030,000,
I should say. General student body of over
30,000.
Our MSA had its own mosque. It had
its own,
several institutions, and it's still running strong to
this day.
Our MSA was unique in the sense that
there seems to be a tension, at least
in the United States. I'm not sure if
it's like that over here in in the
UK. But there seems to be a tension
in student Muslim groups between people who want
to,
do something that that leans more toward activism
versus people who want to,
run an organization that leans more towards spirituality.
Is that an issue over here?
I don't know. So people seem to be
at loggerheads with one another
with regards to this tension.
And in fact, if you observe
what's happening on the national scene in the
United States of America and the Muslim community.
This tension is actually pulling more and more.
And I know it affects England. I know
there's, England and the UK. I I apologize.
There's someone from Scotland here. I know it
it affects the UK,
and there is some interplay back and forth
with the UK, although the UK because I
feel like because it's,
has more proximity toward the,
Muslim world.
It's kind of, like, halfway between where America
is and halfway between where the Muslim world
is. But
on a global stage, I see whatever fitna
starts in America.
It's only a matter of time. First, it's
going to fly to Heathrow and Manchester,
and then it's going to make its way
to the Muslim world as well.
And so that's just the
the the the age that we live in.
That trends, cultural trends,
globally, they start from the west and they
kind of ripple eastward from there. So it's
good. It's
a hadith of Rasool Allah
that the happy person
happy is not the one who's dancing to
the happy song. When the Rasool Allah sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam talks about happy,
The happy one is the one who is
written amongst the felicitous
in the decree and the judgment of Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala. So it's not the one
who's happy and having fun right now because
there are many people who are having fun
right now, that their destiny is not a
happy destiny. And there are many people who
are right now going through difficulty, but their
destiny is one of eternal happiness.
The happy one is the one who learns
the lesson from someone else's misfortune.
You don't have to go through the same,
through the same difficulties in order to learn
the same lesson. You can learn from observing
from other people so you don't have to,
go through those misfortunes. You can do things
the easy way or the hard way. The
sunnah is to do things
the easy way.
So our MSA, I am very proud to
say, this is before I went to any
of these places to study deen, and before
I studied tera'at, and before I studied the
usul of this, that, and the other thing,
and before I taught classes or any of
that, when I was just a university student,
taking, Arabic and the Turkic languages of of
of Central Asia and taking biochemistry. Any biochem
people over here?
No?
Come on, man.
I'm sure that room is filled with people
who wanna be a doctor. Right? You have
to take some biochem for that, don't you?
At any rate, back from those days,
for whatever reason,
the group of people we were working with,
we had this understanding that the 2 of
them, there's, a, there's not necessarily any tension
between them, but the higher realization is what?
For either of them to be true and
for either of them to be sincere and
for either of them to be accepted by
Allah ta'ala,
they have to both be commensurate with one
another. They have to work hand in hand.
If your spirituality
involves you learning fit and involves you, you
know, making Thikr and involves you fasting and
whatnot,
without care for what's going on around you.
Immediately around you, both amongst Muslim students and
their and and concern for their welfare, as
well as that of students of other faith,
as well as that of other minorities on
campus that are being,
not treated fairly,
as well as not having
concern for what? So we have the human
appeal banner here. Right? Where's where's where's Omar
when you need him? Last time he was
the president of FOCUS,
I spoke at the the,
the conference in Brighton. Omar, if you're listening
to this,
listening to this or you see recording, I'm
calling you out. What? Are you too good
for FOCUS now? Have you moved on? Are
you not FOCUS for life like I am,
MSA for life?
These things are important.
These things are important. Islamic Relief. I work
for Islamic Relief just like Omar works for
Human Appeal and the Ummah Welfare Trust and
all these wonderful organizations that are doing this
type of work. Not just for Muslims.
Not just for Muslims. For people of
any faith and every faith, anyone who is
downtrodden, anyone who is poor, anyone who is
weak, anyone who is being discriminated against, anyone
who is having a hard time is down
on their, fortune.
To do the work for those people, to
stick up for those people. That someone should
see you. That you have your beard. You
have your head covered. You have your hijab.
You have your niqab. A man or woman
should see you. You should You You're dressed
in traditional clothes or you're dressed in whatever
the clothing of your place is, but you're
distinguishably
a Muslim. People see you as a Muslim
and they know they can come and talk
to you, and they can come and get
help from you. Whether it's advice, whether it's
help with dealing with the administration,
whether it's a person who's hungry, who knows
this person, who has a beard, this person
who has a hijab on, this woman who
has a niqab on, this brother who has
a,
you know, has a kufi on his head
or whatever. This person,
we can rely on them. We can seek
help from them. We can ask them, you
know, can you watch my bag while I,
you know, go and do something? Or we
can rely on that person to help us
when we're down. This is very important. This
is one of the sunun of Rasool Allah
sallahu alaihi wa sallam. And this is a
sign of your spirituality.
Do you not know the first,
the first chapter of Sahih Bukhari?
Right? So our good,
brother Asim was saying that in my house
we have 3 Madhebs and people from this
school and that school and people follow all
sorts of different types of,
you know, different types of trends within Islam
or boycott all of them altogether. And, you
know, some people pray, you know, with their
hands here and their hands here and their
hands, god knows where. Some people don't pray
at all. What is one of the distinguishing
characteristics of Islam?
These differences are great. They're wonderful. These people
are students of knowledge can learn all about
them. What is a distinguishing characteristic of Islam
That has nothing to do with any of
these differences
that that that that supersedes all of these
differences.
That superexists all of these differences.
The first the first chapter of the opening
salvo of Sahib Bukhari is what?
Is the Kitab, Kefa, Badha and Wahi.
The book about how revelation
began. Revelation started.
Rasulullah Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam when he received Iqra and he
had this this interaction with Sayna Jibreel alaihi
wasallam,
he himself was in doubt about what happened.
The
experience is overwhelming. This is something people don't
realize, don't understand. One of the reasons the
Sahaba
has such a high rank and high Matam
in this Ummah is what? It's because we
live with the benefit of hindsight
of 1400 years of civilization.
You can sit in the FOSUS conference and
see that there are people of all sorts
of different ethnic and,
social backgrounds, economic backgrounds were gathered together, that
someone is from the Indian subcontinent, and someone
is an Arab, and somebody is new to
the religion, and somebody is from a a
family that's, you know, their lineage has been
Muslim for 1400 years, somebody is from every
continent of the world. You have the hindsight
of all of these things as what? As
providential
verifiers of the truth of the message of
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
But the Sahaba radiallahu anhu, they didn't have
any of those things. Many of them died
before any of these predictions and prophecies of
sallallahu alaihi sallam. All of which came true.
They died before they even saw with their
own eyes that this came true, but because
he said it, they believed him. This is
one of the many reasons they have a
rank over the rest of the Ummah. So
if that's their condition, imagine Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam himself.
Because nobody gave him a story book in
which he gets to see the architecture of
the massages of the Ottoman empire afterward.
He was he was what? He just disliked
idol worship. He disliked
indecency.
He disliked
oppression, and so he would stay away from
the Musharikin of Quresh, and he would retreat
up in the cave of Hera, and he
would worship Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in a
way which is known to him in Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala. And this overwhelming
experience happens to him.
And so what happens is that he comes
back to his wife Khadija Radhi
cover me up cover me up, and he's,
like, in cold sweat and shaking
because what he saw, he doesn't nobody told
him what's gonna this is, like, this is
not after Uhud and Badr and the Fata
and all of this other stuff. This is
not like at that later time after the
israel and is all done. This is something
out of the blue. It's something he doesn't
he, you know, he's it's also new to
him. He's processing it. How to say the
and
how, how to say
the console him?
So,
No. Indeed. This thing, you know, you say
that you fear for yourself,
it's the the the matter is completely the
opposite.
Why? Because Allah Ta'ala will never disgrace you.
He'll never humiliate you. He'll never make you
grieve. And then she gives the proofs for
why Allah Ta'ala would never do that, which
is what?
You're the one who carries the one who
has no no, no one to inherit from
them. The one who has no heir. The
one who has nobody no close relative to,
carry carry them. Anyone who speak Punjabi?
No. Yes. Right? Right.
This word kal is actually a very strange
word in the Arabic language. Right? Yeah. Al
Kalala, it comes in Surat,
Surat Al Nisa. And I always find it
very interesting because the the meaning of it,
even people who are native speakers of Arabic,
it's a strange word. It's not a word
that you use like in daily speech or
whatever. So if if you ever
hear the word or with the shutdown of
the lamb, it means
The one who has nobody to the one
who's alone, he has nobody to inherit. One
of the strange strange things that kinda works
out funny. This is right.
Nobody
else,
to, to literally had no heir, no close
relative
to take care of them. You're the one
who carries them.
The one who is so broke. Right? Literally
means a person who doesn't exist. Like, it's
a it's a metaphor. That person who's so
broke, he doesn't even exist.
That person who has so little money that
he he even doesn't have enough money to
exist. Right? It's a metaphor. It's an expression.
Right?
Right? You you you you
right? You, you're the one who when a
guest comes,
you honor the guest. Honoring the guest for
some reason used to be, until very recently,
a universal,
value,
in the of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam. For some reason, it seems to be
abandoned and jettisoned for reasons known to Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala. I have no idea why.
Because a guest comes with his own risk.
He comes with his own provision that Allah
has meet it meet it out for him
or her. It's not like the guest comes
to your house and eats your food. The
guest will only eat the risk that they
have allotted for them by Allah ta'ala.
But because you accepted that guest, that person
who Allah and his Rasool Allahu alaihi wa
sallam love,
Because of that, they eat their own risk.
They bring the risk with them, and they
eat the risk that they bring with them
into the house, the provision that they bring
with them into the house. But when they
leave the sin of the house, leave with
them.
Right? Right? One of the things said the
Khadija
said to the Rasul
as a proof that
that what Allah is not going to
humiliate him. That the spirituality of what just
happened is true.
Is what
That you're the one, the the the viscitudes,
the vengeance,
the vengeance that that that time and circumstance
takes against a person for standing with the
truth, you're the one who stands with them.
Is speaking the truth going to make you
friends?
No.
Is being Muslim gonna make you friends? Absolutely
not.
And if anything from the we learn we
learn that the first set of people who
are going to resent you for practicing the
is your own relatives and close people.
Your neighbors, your friends, your relatives, your close
people. If you practice the din as much
as you can. And I'm not talking about,
like,
super insular,
super, you know, appetite, judgmental, fundamentalist,
like, closed minded weirdo type that's not that
deen is not our deen in the 1st
place. That's not what Rasulullah salallahu alaihi wa
sallam came with in the 1st place. I'm
talking about
I'm talking about even a smile as charity.
I'm talking about speaking the truth. I'm talking
about doing all these things, helping other people.
The first people who are gonna resent you
is what? Is the people who are closest
to you. If Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam,
as a matter of aqida, we believe he's
the nicest person who Allah ta'ala ever created.
If Rasool Allah salallahu alaihi wa sallam, his
own relatives, family members, tribesmen are going to
resent him, for for what? For speaking the
truth despite being the nicest person Allah ta'ala
ever created.
What chance do you and me have?
We're never gonna be as nice as him
salallahu alaihi wa sallam. What chance do you
and me have that we're going to be
able to
walk this path and tread this path, and
nobody is going to give us any difficulty?
The point is not to make enemies out
of people. Rasulullah salallahu alaihi wa sallam never
wanted to make an enemy out of anybody.
Rasulullah salallahu alaihi wa sallam, his prayers were
for everybody.
Rasulullah salallahu alaihi wa sallam. Allah ta'ala created
him in a certain way. Right? Allah ta'ala
created him to be what the the manifestation
of his mercy in his creation.
And so Rasulullah salallahu alaihi wa sallam used
to make dua for everybody. For his ummah.
The good people in his ummah. The sinners
of his ummah for the people who didn't
believe in him. The people who didn't believe
in Allah ta'ala.
Allah ta'ala says in his book, he says
seek forgiveness for them or don't seek forgiveness
for them. When talking about the Munafiqin.
Who are the Munafiqin?
The hypocrites, the people who profess Islam outwardly
and inside the reality inside their heart is
a reality of disbelief.
Allah says that these people are
that these people are the 1 inmates of
the lowest
of the the the lowest dungeon of the
hellfire.
The worst of Allah ta'ala's creation.
Allah Ta'ala says, regarding them to the messenger
of Allah salallahu alaihi wa sallam. He said,
what?
Seek forgiveness for them or do not seek
forgiveness for them. If you sought forgiveness for
them 70 times,
Allah Ta'ala wouldn't forgive them. So Hadith of
Sahih Bukhari in which Rasulullah
said,
if I knew seeking forgiveness for them more
than 70 times would have made a difference,
I would have done so.
The point of this the point of this,
this,
proclamation from Allah is not to say that
you have to do it more than 70
times. It means what? 70 is a metaphor
for a large number that that could go
to infinity. That as much as you seek
forgiveness for them, it's not going to benefit.
He said, if I knew more than 70
times it would have helped, I would have
sought forgiveness more than 70 times.
Being like this with the creation of
Allah is the sunnah of the prophet So
coming back to what? Coming back to this
idea of you have, you know, this false
idea that there's some tension between,
being a spiritual person,
and and being an activist. Or being somebody
who wants to change the world around them.
Having concern for the world around them. This
idea of tension,
this is a an anxiety
of western civilization
that Muslims have taken upon their shoulders. It
is alien to our tradition.
Our tradition has issues and problems.
This is not one of them. You will
not hear Ghazali talking about it. You will
not hear Abu Hanifa talking about it. You
will not hear Malik talking about it. You
will not hear Abdul Khadir Jelani talking about
it. You will not hear Ibn Taymiyyah, Ibn
Qayyib, Ibn Rajab talking about it. This is
an issue that's alien to our culture. As
an idea, it's a foreign idea, an alien
idea that somebody has to somehow pick between
their spirituality
and between,
servicing their fellow human beings, serving mankind, making
the world a better place.
Making the world a better place, which hopefully
is the reason why people want to go
into activism. This is a whole separate issue
that not everybody wants to be an activist.
Not everybody wants to even serve the deen
for the sake of Allah ta'ala. Some people
wanna do it just because they like to
have the mic in their hand. Which is
very dubious for me to say because I
actually happen to have the mic in my
hand right now. So you make dua for
me as well, and I make dua for
you. But the idea is that all of
these things, the whether it's the khutba, whether
it's leading the prayer, whether whether it's the
recitation of the Quran or coming to the
masjid,
or whether it's feeding the poor, or whether
it's what?
Helping the person who is downtrodden, helping the
person who is oppressed.
The reality is that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
will only accept one reason for doing any
of these things, which is what? For his
sake. That you do it for his sake.
Any other reason you do any of these
things, Allah won't accept them. If you understand
that, you can understand why all of these
things should fit together in one person. Now,
the problem we have is this, is that
doing things for the sake of Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala is very
inexpedient.
It's very
what? Inexpedient.
So, for example,
I can tell you as a person who
has experience raising funds,
for
different charities,
that if this was a fundraiser, which thank
God it's not. If this was a fundraiser,
if I made an appeal for everybody to
give for XYZ,
you know, cause, and there are a number
of heartbreaking causes that we should all give
for. If I made the appeal and left
the box,
I can tell you that there's a
quantitatively
predictable
shortfall that we'll have in how much we
collect versus if I were to say who's
gonna give x amount of dollars, who's gonna
give y amount of dollars, who's gonna give
z amount of dollars.
Why? Because we are influenced by seeing other
people around us and I'm not necessarily saying
that people who
give by raising their hands or the people
who raise money like that by raising their
hands, there's something wrong with it. Rasool Allah
also used to raise funds publicly in his
masjid like this, that people used to give
in order to encourage one another. But the
idea is that we have this we have
this this concept in our deen
that the best charity is the charity that's
given,
where the right hand doesn't know what the
left hand is doing. Meaning what? It's so
secret, this is a metaphor, for that it's
so secret that even a person hides it
from themselves, much less from any other creation.
Why? Because it's supposed to be a secret
between them and Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Right?
So using charity as an example,
sincerity for the sake of Allah ta'ala
is very inefficient and expedient.
It's very what?
Inefficient and very inexpedient.
And we will find there are a lot
of the teachings of the deen
in order to affect change in the world
around us. They seem very inefficient and expedient.
Now we have a set of knuckleheads in
the Ummah
that
have seen this inefficiency and this lack of
expediency and said, well, all of these other,
you know, colonial hegemonic powers have,
impressed
their, you know, the Buddha of their oppression,
both on their own populaces and on the
populaces that the Muslim world, which, I
mean, in some ways, it's kind of true.
Okay?
They've done this and now we have to
fight back, You know, fight fire, it's fire
in order to do what? In order to,
free ourselves from them. Okay?
So this is very interesting
interesting,
thought process. Some of these movements are non
violent, some of these movements are horrible, violent.
Right? The easy, group to take a cheap
shot at because of their own knuckle headed
ways is what? Like ISIS and Mancha Baha'u.
Right? That what? We're going to make the
caliphate, and we're gonna do it by having
the same total war, and like, collateral damage,
and all this other nonsense that that are
not part of our,
traditional way of doing things, we're gonna just
jettison that tradition because it's what? It's inexpedient.
We wanna effect the change in the world
around us and to * with the spirituality.
You know, like, you literally you see soldiers
that don't know how to read a page
from the mushaf, but they're saying we're, you
know, establishing some of caliphate or whatever. These
type of knuckleheaded people that are what because
of the lack of expediency, they've shifted the
means by which they wish to,
change the world around them. And we all
know that this is not working well.
It's not working well for the Muslims.
It's not working well for people of other
faiths. It's not working well in the Muslim
lands where the majority of the people that
these people kill and harm are, and it's
not working well in the,
lands of people of other faiths where they're
causing disruption and causing Islam to have a,
a bad picture. A picture that it really
doesn't deserve because it's not based on the
teachings of Islam.
Look at Mosin where, probably, where, brother Omar
is all joking aside right now. It is
a a it is an ancient metropolis,
of the, Near East and it is an
ancient metropolis of what? Of, of of the
Muslim lands.
Of the Muslim lands. And it is one
of the centers from which the movement to
counter and push back
the, invasion of the the, invasion of the
the the the the the Afranghvi.
Right? The word Crusader is how the
Crusaders, the Crusades self identified.
The Muslims never
considered them to be Crusaders nor did they
consider them to be Christians or representatives of
Christianity because Muslims had Christians in their lands.
That they didn't have these type of weird,
like, total wars and like brutal and *
conflicts with. The idea that the Muslims had
is that people live in this kind of
weird far off place, which is this barbaric
place where there's no laws, people don't have
rights to buy, sell, trade, feudal system, all
of these other things, etcetera, etcetera.
And this is a clash between what? In
the Muslim chronicles, the word that they used
to use for the for the Crusaders is
not This is a an English or sorry,
a European term that is transduced into Arabic.
It literally means crusader
later on. The contemporaries, they said that this
is a war that we have with the,
with
the the the the the Franks. It's a
cognate for the word foreigner also in the
Persian language. That these people are just this
kind of foreign barbarian horde and they threw
them back out. Otherwise, the Christians lived in
the Muslim lands for centuries as they live
in the Muslim lands now. In fact, if
nothing else with the advent of modern nationalism,
that's the biggest calamity that hit the, Christian
populations in the Muslim world. Bigger than any
sort of theocratic rule or bigger than any
sort of, backlash against crusades or whatever. Right?
Muslims Christians have been living with Muslims for
centuries since the very beginning. I remember I
was sitting
says tell stories because people like hearing stories.
You become too abstract and people, you lose
them. Right? So I'll tell you a story.
I was sitting next to,
I sit next to funny people in airplanes
and they could probably say the same thing.
So I was sitting next to a carpenter
on an airplane
and, you know, making small talk and then
after a while he goes, well,
you know,
I'm gonna be frank with you. You seem
like a nice guy and I'm assuming you're
you're Muslim. I'm like, yeah, I'm Muslim.
He he goes he goes, You know, you
you seem like a nice guy but, you
know, I just can't get over this. How
come the Quran, you know, says that you
gotta kill all the infidels?
I go, Look man, I go, aside from
some sort of long theological or exegetical discussion
I can have with you which you're not
prepared for and you're not probably interested in,
I'll just ask you a couple of simple
questions.
He says he says, okay. Go ahead. I
said, do you think we take our religion
seriously? I said, look at me. Do you
think I take my religion seriously? He goes,
yeah. But do you think that I people
like myself take our religion much more seriously
than the average American does? He goes, yeah.
I do.
I go, if it was written I said,
Syria
Syria has, like, a 30%. Because this is
obviously before Syria was engulfed in war. All
of that helps its people, whatever faith they're
of. So Syria has a 30%
Christian population. Palestine has a 35% Christian population.
Iraq has a 10% Christian population. Almost all
of which is decimated now post the the
second Iraq war.
You know, Egypt has a 10% Christian population.
Again,
because of what's happened literally in the last
couple of years, all of these populations that
were living stably have now become unstable. And
this is not something that, you know, we
only complain to Allah about the bizarre,
the bizarre circumstances that have taken over the
Muslim world and the horrible circumstances that have
taken over the Muslim world. I said, all
of these countries have these huge Christian populations.
I said, do you think if our book
told us,
right, to kill all of to kill all
of them,
that so many centuries passed without a Geneva
convention, and without any sort of concept of
war crimes, or any of these things, do
you think we would have left one of
you alive in our lands?
He goes, no. I don't think you would
have. I go, thank you.
Right? It's not it's it's not like that.
Right? So coming back to the the coming
back to the issue that we're talking about,
we have now these people who think that
that that what?
That
we have to have, like, ad hoc,
goals that we need to affect in the
society, the world around us.
Right?
And
they're not getting done,
so we have to use different means in
order to achieve and attain our goals.
And I tell you this, that this you
know, this kind of reductionist thinking, which is
a hallmark of a,
a family of philosophies
known as modernism. I have a whole like,
7 hour presentation on modernism.
One day, if you're interested in
in in doing so, you can, like, I'll
send you like a copy of it or
a tape or whatever. If you want to,
you can go through it.
If there's some kind of geeky people who
are really interested,
maybe I can come and do a presentation
in your in your school or whatever about
it. Modernism doesn't mean like having an Android
and an iPhone and, you know, like living
in 2,000 and,
17 and all of these things. These are
not,
these are not things you do
consciously. It just kinda is what it is.
Modernism is a set of philosophies,
that kinda go hand in hand and that
have become kind of the common currency amongst
people,
at some point or another.
And then after, there's something called postmodernism which
we won't get into. But, like, the idea
that somehow technology is gonna solve all of
our problems. The idea that every generation is
smarter than the generation before it. Alright? So
that's why progress is all is progress good
or bad?
Is progress good? Raise your hand if you
think progress is good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Raise
your hand if you think progress is bad.
It's a trap. Progress
might be good
if you're, like, about to finish a project.
Right? If you're at the edge of a
cliff, progress is bad. The word progress
has absolutely
no,
has absolutely
no denotation of good or bad. It depends
on what what's being referred
to. Okay? Evolution. Is revolutionary.
Something is revolutionary. Is revolutionary good or bad?
It's it's great. It's wonderful. This revolutionary product.
I have a revolutionary product. I have, like,
a headset and I'm, like, * back and
forth and I'm gonna the next new thing
in high energy. It's revolutionary.
What if what if you have like a
wonderful system, which is just and fair, and
the revolution comes and overthrows it. Right?
Is revolutionary good or bad?
Revolutionary would be bad in that sense. If
you have a bad system and revolutionary brings
a good system, then revolution is good. If
you have a bad system and revolution brings
another type of bad system,
then,
you know, it's it's not really good or
bad, is it?
But this kind of idea of modernism, what
it what it does is it it loads
all of these terms. It strips them of
their denotation, and it loads them with this
connotation.
You have to be smarter. Why? Because we
live according to a revealed tradition in which
there is such a thing as an absolute
truth.
Not everything is absolutely right or wrong, but
there are certain principles that are absolute truth
that are are,
what you call our tradition is based on.
And you should judge things based on those
principles
rather than
buzzwords that people use and make fools out
of one another on a daily basis.
Okay? So what are what do we say?
We say, okay, one of the one of
the ideas in modernism is what? It's reductionism.
It's the idea that you're not going to
like like knowledge is not is not this
like holistic
this holistic thing. Rather, knowledge is only going
to be sought in specificity.
So in the old days, people used to
study all sorts of different things and then
they had something called philosophy that they used
to,
use in order to synthesize and bring together
all of these different fields of knowledge in
order to understand something about the world around
them. Now what happens is that when you
do a master's degree, there's some specificity in
what you're studying. And when you do a
PhD, there's more specificity. And so you have
a, you know, a a same department has
a 100 different professors. Each of them knows
a whole lot about something very small,
which is great. It's wonderful. It confers some
benefits. Right?
The problem is this, is if you're a
doctor and all you know is,
a great deal of knowledge about how a
certain chemical affects, like, a stretch of nerve,
you know, in in one section of your
finger,
maybe you'll find a way of treating the
diseases of that one section of the finger,
and you'll end up killing the whole rest
of the body.
Right? There needs to be a balance between,
you know, between between reductionism and, like, focusing
in on certain things, and specifically the reductionism
that focuses in on things that are empirically,
apparent in front of you. What does empirically
apparent mean? What does it what does empiricism?
The idea if I cannot see it, taste
it, smell it, touch it, it doesn't exist.
The idea that if I can't see it,
taste it, smell it, touch it, it doesn't
exist. So empiricism is taking us some sort
of, like, wonderful truth. Right? Even though it's
it's not I mean, it is a a
source of truth, but it's not the end
of truth.
Right? Okay. If I can't touch it, it
doesn't exist. That means that the knowledge that
you as a human being and a chimpanzee
and a, jellyfish that has some sort of
basic, like, nervous system.
Right? The the knowledge that you can have
is essentially qualitatively
of one type.
Why?
Because if you want to empirically prove fire
is hot, you can burn a jellyfish and
it will have some reaction. You can burn
a a dog and it has some reaction.
You can burn a human being and it
has some reaction. Now tell me something. Right?
Who here who here has, like, taken math
further than calculus?
Right? You've taken math further than calculus. Right?
The calculations you need to do in order
to run the electrical systems in this room
and calculate the load that's born by, like,
by by different parts of the building.
Can you do those calculations with roman numerals?
You cannot do it with roman numerals.
What's the salient difference between the roman counting
system and between the the Arabic or really
Indian counting system? Sorry, my Arab brothers. We're
gonna have to pull the rug out from
underneath you. This this this one is all
Desi people. Okay? You guys just took our
knowledge and gave it to the Europeans which
that's good. That's a good deed. You'll be
rewarded for it, inshallah. Right? What it what
is it? What is it? It's 0.
Right? 0 is a philosophical concept.
The fact that you write 0 on a
piece of paper, it's a philosophical concept because
0 means nothing. The fact that you wrote
something means that it's not it can't actually
empirically represent 0.
Without 0, you can't do any of these
calculations. Can somebody can somebody show me 0?
Can somebody prove that 0 exists?
By its very definition, it doesn't exist.
We need to
we need to what? Transact in the world
of things that are not empirically provable because
they have a reality.
Because they have a reality.
Now what happens, masha'Allah, some kid,
their parents,
whatever, immigrated to the UK,
and,
you know, they they're not super sophisticated people,
and the kid was, you know, born and
raised on a steady diet of public school
in television, and now they go to university
because they wanna be a doctor because this
is also in the Quran somewhere. Right?
So you wanna be a doctor, so you
take, like, some philosophy class and whatever and
some docansey type gentleman
gets up and says, oh, can you,
point to me and show me
where God is? Or can I touch God?
Or can I feel him? Or can I
taste him? Or can I smell him? Or
can I hear him? Oh, I can't. That
means he's your imaginary friend in the sky.
Stupid, swarthy, immigrant,
backwards people.
Come on, man. Really?
Really?
If the only thing that exists is what's
empirical. Right? Tell me something all the, like,
calculations of thermodynamics have to do with absolute
zero. All of these mathematics has to do
with 0. Tell me something. Tell me something.
There's a realm of knowledge higher than empirical
knowledge. It's called rational knowledge. It's diminishing day
by day amongst people. Okay?
Rational knowledge is what? It's what we call
logic. Right? Tell me something. If if I
told you, hey. This phone, by the way,
it wasn't here 5 minutes ago. It just
appeared out of the middle of thin air.
Right? You said that's stupid. That doesn't
that doesn't work. Things don't work that way.
Is there anyone who if I told them
that the phone spontaneously
started to exist,
anyone who thinks that that's not a completely
stupid proposition.
I apologize. My mother, Shisai, said the word
stupid. She'd probably smack me. Right? Put your
hand down. Unless you're willing to be made
a fool out of right now.
I'll take you on. I'll do it. Alright.
He's just joking. Right? Obviously, it's ridiculous.
Nobody would believe it.
Muslim,
Christian, Jewish, Hindu,
atheist,
agnostic,
nobody would believe it because it doesn't it
doesn't make any sense. Right? In the in
the middle ages, right? So you read in
your biology books, they used to believe that
what?
They used to believe that, like, life spontaneously,
you know, spontaneous generation life would come up
come about spontaneously.
And then, like, Louis Pasteur did this, like,
his experiments that are still, like, in some
museum in Paris. And now because modernism is
what? One of the things of modernism is
an idea that every,
generation is somehow smarter and superior to the
one that came before it. So in our
modern arrogance, we say,
our forefathers were so stupid. I have to
agree with you. The idea that like, piece
of rancid meat in a cellar is going
to turn into a rat spontaneously is a
pretty dumb idea.
No. I I have to agree with you.
It's not it's not like the super, like,
smartest idea in the world. However, however,
okay?
What's what's what's dumber? To think that a
piece of rat I'm sorry. A piece of
rancid meat
will turn into a rat or to think
that nothing will turn into everything?
Surely, rancid meat is more than nothing.
And surely, everything
is more than a rat.
So by logical, what they call a priority,
anyone here taking like a a a whatever,
Aristotelian logic in Arabic. Right?
Right? It's a a priori analogy. That if
the first thing is is irrational,
the second thing is far more irrational.
It's qualitatively
the same type of irrationality,
quantitatively a greater,
iteration of that same type of irrationality.
Right?
The idea is coming back to what we
were talking about.
We have a principle we have a principle
tradition.
We have a tradition that is based on
on
on on Usul, right, on these principles.
And it is based on a prophetic methodology.
That prophetic methodology teaches us what?
What to do and how to do it.
To jettison the ends is just as much
of a betrayal as jettisoning the means because
the means themselves are sacred.
And the means, one of the salient and
dominant characteristics of the means to doing anything
that affect change in the world around you
is what? Is that you have to do
it for the sake of Allah You have
to do it with sincerity.
And the idea that you think that your
means are inefficient,
and inexpedient, and you have to jettison those
inexpedient means in order to
come to a more efficient means to getting
what you want,
That idea has to do with what? Your
disbelief in Allah and His Rasulullah
Your understanding or your feeling or your thinking
that you have a way that's better than
their way, or you have put more thought
into it, or have bring more smartness to
the way that you are gonna do it,
then they brought into it. And by all
means, do so. Don't call it Islamic afterward.
Don't call it Muslim afterward, where you're going
to have these means that you're gonna establish
some sort of, you know, bizarre caliphate or
theocratic state,
based on breaking all the laws of that
sacred,
tradition that you wish to
build a state for.
Now, coming to,
you know, right now Asim is like having
a heart attack. He says, Sheikh, this is
not what I told you to talk about.
Okay?
This is just setting it all up. The
the talk actually is very simple,
which is what?
The times we live in are difficult.
If it was hard for our forefathers
to live this life of spirituality and sincerity
to God,
from which they will both
make a relationship with the divine
before they leave from this world. And from
which they will
make the world a better place.
If it was hard for them, one might
look at the circumstances around us and think
that in this age it's even harder, the
deck is stacked even,
greater against us.
But the idea is
that, first of all, if you trust in
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, you have to trust
that the prescription that he gives you to
overwhelm
the circumstances
around you
is going to work.
This is why there is one of the,
that comes from the book of Allah Ta'ala
and the sunnah of the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam is what?
Allah ta'ala is enough for me. He's sufficient
for me and he's the best disposer of
my affairs. That he chose something for you.
He said for you that the means of
your livelihood
right, we need our community needs money in
order to build masjids, in order to build
madrasas, in order to build, you know, in
order to feed the poor and the orphans
whether they're Muslims or people of other faith.
We need money to do all of these
things. Allah Ta'ala is the one who prescribed
to you that the only money that you're
going to be able to successfully do any
of these things through is what? Halal money.
You can't use the money of usury. You
can't use the money of of lying, cheating,
stealing from people. You can't use the money
that's earned through deception. You can't use the
money of prostitution. You can't use the money
of
foul means in order to in order to
effect good ends, good outcomes.
One will say, Subhanallah man, you just locked
us out of the entire financial system. Right?
Hasbun al Law, Allah is sufficient for us,
he's the best
of our affairs. We trust in him.
The idea is that and there's many examples
we can go through. The idea is what?
If a person wants to wake up in
the morning and be sincere with their creator,
and wants to be sincere with their creation,
the deck is completely stacked against you. What's
the only one thing that you have in
your corner that that works for you? That
will work every single time?
Allah to Allah. The one who created everything
from nothing.
The one infinite source of power in the
universe.
The one from which everything originates and everything
no matter how far the rubber band goes
back, it's gonna
have to come back to Allah to Allah
all that much harder. It's Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala.
And he also made a sunnah for
how these things work and he's described in
his book and he's described in the sunnah
of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam again
and again. Allah says in his book.
Right?
That people there were,
there were prophets,
and there were those who were around them.
And this is a point of aqidah for
us, that the best of Allah's creation are
the people who he bestowed prophecy on.
And the best of Allah's creation after them
are those who serve those people directly.
Directly. The companions of the and the alayhi
wasalam.
That the people came before you. They were
tested and tried and they were
they were shaken. They quaked. Until what?
Until
they themselves asked the question, when is the
help of Allah ta'ala going to come?
Not as a complaint.
Right? Because this is part of our aqid,
our creed that these prophets are infallible.
Not as a complaint, but just wondering that
we're really getting mowed down here. We're doing
everything that's right. We've spent every dollar that's
in our pocket. We've used all of the
intelligence that we have in our brain. We've
physically endured as much hunger and thirst and
beating as we can take. We've endured all
of these stresses.
If Allah doesn't help us now, when is
he gonna help? When is the help of
Allah Ta'al going to come?
Allah Ta'al says what? He says,
Inna Nasrullahi karib. It is at that point
and that point alone that the help of
Allah ta'ala is close at hand.
One of the many wisdoms of this process
is what?
Is that if it happened before you got
to that point,
you would have had a genuine doubt inside
of your heart as to where this help
came from. Was this because of your own
intelligence, hard work, piety,
sincerity, any of those things? Or or was
it from Allah ta'ala's help?
But the beauty of it is what? Is
that when you give everything you have and
you exhaust all of your means and that's
when the help comes,
you know it came from where? It only
came from Allah ta'ala. It could only could
have come from that source.
This happened again and again. There are so
many stories regarding how this happened with Rasulullah
salallahu alaihi wa sallam.
Right? One of my favorite stories one of
my favorite stories,
The
he was sent with an expedition,
of of, I think 200 men. The hadith
is in
you can look it up. It's not something
that requires that you look through the
In the chapter regarding the virtues of hunger.
Right? That what? That he was sent with
an expedition with a small sack of dates.
So go out, do such and such thing
for several weeks, and come back. It's definitely
not enough provision for for us, detachment of
a small army.
So what happened about Ubaydah being a person
who is economically
very frugal.
He gave everybody a date.
He gave everybody one date a day. And
so the the sahaba radiAllahuhan whom said, Najab
al bin Abdullahi radiAllahuhanhuhan,
he said that we used to suck on
that date like a child suckles at the
breast of his mother.
Meaning, if you ate it, it would have
all been gone. So we'd suck on the
date and it would dissolve slowly throughout the
course of the day. We would still be
hungry. So we would take the thick and
hard leaves of the,
desert shrubbery
and then we would put a little water
on them and pound them with our sticks
to make them soft, just in order so
something would fill the stomach. There's no nutrition
in it at all, but so the stomach
would have something in it so that it
wouldn't feel the pains of hunger quite so
badly.
Even all of that ran out.
What happens is that they see a mound
in the distance,
so they go and check it out and
somebody realizes this is a beached whale.
So what happens about Urbaidah, he forbids them.
Go don't don't eat that beached whale. It's
already dead. It's carrying meat. It's haram.
Then he thinks about it and he says
what? The detachment of the army is going
to die.
And we are, right now, sent out in
the path of Allah ta'ala and we are
the representatives of the messenger of Allah salallahu
alaihi wa sallam. So he gives them permission
to eat.
Not knowing that what that the carrying from
the sea is also
halal. It's also halal in our sacred law.
Right? You don't have to slaughter things that
come out of the ocean.
So what happens, this beached whale.
Right? It's a marine mammal. Right? So the
rest of the hadith describes how they're eating
from it, and how they're hacking off pieces
of meat from it that are the size
of, like, a a
a head of cattle and they're roasting it
and they're eating it. For days, they eat
eat from it. They dry the rest of
the meat. They cut it in strips, dry
it up, and and store it, preserve it.
And they ate probably better than the people
in Madinah Munawwala would have eaten.
And what happens when they get back, this
animal is so big that what? That the
the the ribs of it when they're erected
when they're they're they're erected and put, upright,
that a man riding on an animal could
pass underneath it. This is how large this
animal was and they ate from it for
so many days.
When they come back to the what? When
they come back to Madinah Munawara, what happens?
They tell the story to Rasulullah salallahu alaihi
wa sallam, not only does he approve that
they ate from it, he also asked, do
you have some of it left with you?
I would like to eat from it as
well.
Why?
Because this is a this is a risk
provision from Allah ta'ala. Why? Because it came
to you when you're at your wits end.
You exhausted everything you had for the sake
of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and you're at
your wits end. This is a special provision
from Allah ta'ala. It's a proof of
product providential
providential endorsement of what you're doing, and the
providential help that comes from Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala for the person who leaves his home
to do what's right and to do what's
best.
This is an understanding our forefathers had. Literally,
if you want to go through the stories
of the Sahaba radiAllahu anhu during the life
of Rasool Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, and
then afterward.
And the stories of the uliya, and the
ulema, and the salihim, and the righteous people
up until this day, you will see again
and again and again. Those people who combine
concern for the for making the world a
better place with their spirituality,
these things happen again and again and again.
And they get those things done on those
meager means
that other people couldn't get done spending 10
times, a 100 times, a 1000 times that
amount. How many people hear your ISOC is
the most well funded organization on campus?
How many people is your ISOC can you
think of? There are other other religious groups
that that have less people who participate less
in the student life in their organization
and their funding is almost 10 times as
much, and you still have more visibility on
campus.
I don't wanna, like, pick names and things
like that and, like, whatever, say anything bad
about anybody else. The fact of the matter
is what? As long as you do what
you do with sincerity and belief in Allah
Ta'ala, you do what you do with sincerity
and belief in Allah Ta'ala and concern for
making, those around you, improving their their their
their plight and improving their and helping those
around you.
Will always give you from a type of
help that cannot come from money, that cannot
come from,
that cannot come from influence, that cannot come
from class, and privilege, and race, or any
of these things. Why?
Because it has a connection with a higher
realm.
Empirically you may not be able to count
it and like show it to other people,
but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. In
fact, this is something that our deen teaches
us, that the abstract is more powerful than
the tangible.
Right. That the the abstract is more powerful
than the tangible. The thing that you cannot
see and the thing that's unseen is deeper
and more profound and has more of an
impact on you and will last forever
and will have a longer,
lasting effect than what? Those things that are
physical and mundane and corporeal that are around
you. So Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala give myself
and all of us the tawfiq that we
can get our minds out
of material things which are good servants and
bad terrible masters.
And focus on hearts on the Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala that we neither see nor touch
nor smell as a matter of creed.
But also as a matter of creed, logically,
rationally, we know he's not only necessarily existent,
but we feel his existence through our our
our day and through our night and through
our every moment and through our every breath.
Allah ta'ala says in his
Remember your lord inside your very being. Not
just a of saying
That's great. That's wonderful. Right? But such a
dhikr that's inside of your very
being.
Right? In in in humility,
and in awe, in fear.
Something that's so subtle, it's even more subtle
than than the speech of the tongue.
By the morning and by the night.
And
in no case are you ever allowed to
be heedless of this remembrance. Allah ta'ala make
this remembrance enter into every one of our
hearts, so that we can have barakah in
the work that we do, that we can
trust in him whenever we need him. He's
the one who is the best disposal of
our affairs. He's the one who will give
us help in this world if what we
want to see happens in this world or
doesn't happen. Maybe you plant a seed and
after you die something good comes of of
it.
If you did something good, will never waste
it. Even if you don't see it in
in this life. If you see it in
this life, or if you don't see it
in this life, everybody will meet Allah
and see what they have on that day.
On that day he's not gonna ask you,
did you establish the caliphate or not?
On that day he's not going to ask
you, why isn't your masjid the biggest masjid
in all of Birmingham?
Why isn't your ice sock filled with people?
Fill the ice sock with people for sure.
Alright? But what are you going to be
asked? You're going to be asked about your
sincerity,
and all of those deeds that may be
as numerous as the stars in the sky.
If there's no sincerity in them, right?
Allah is pure. He doesn't accept anything other
than that which is pure. May Allah give
you good deeds that are like the stars
in the sky and that are also filled
with sincerity by the barakah, this noble remembrance
and zikr. All I give all of us
so much.