Hamzah Wald Maqbul – Khutbah When the Game Stops ICC 01292021
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Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala
sent to Rasulullah
wa a'layhi wa sallam
with guidance in the way of truth,
the way of supreme truth in front of
which nothing else has any value.
So that its perfection
and its superiority
can be made manifest over all other ways.
The life of this country is very interesting
right now.
One week after the other after the other,
something completely different than
the week before happens which is either catastrophic
or unprecedented.
So this
week,
we see that there is a run
on
shortage stocks
in the stock exchange.
What is a shortage stock? A shortage stock
is a stock in which essentially to
save time,
in which investors essentially place bets on a
stock that that stock is gonna decrease.
Has nothing to do with increasing any sort
of economic output. You're not selling any tangible
good. You're not buying any tangible good. You're
not investing in anything. Although it's called investment,
but it's the same thing like usury is
called
interest in this country. It's a complete euphemism.
It's a bet. It's a gamble.
And it is a it is a gamble
that hurts real companies.
Because when large investors,
institutional investors, quote unquote, will short a stock,
the rest of the market pays attention
and they start to sell that stock, that
stock devalues. And what ends up happening? It
affects real people with real jobs.
It affects
real stores.
It affects the rents that those stores pay
to have a place in a real building.
It affects the real marketplace even though it
itself is a complete gamble.
So what happened?
A group of people artificially pumped up the
price of a shortage of shortage stock and
then attempted to do so with a couple
of other stocks.
And it caused the market to go into
complete panic.
A large capital group valued over $15,000,000,000
co
completely collapsed.
And now the country is completely up at
arms. So there are as a group of
people who are
in favor of the, Wall Street current system
and the
quasi monopolistic
grasp
on these publicly traded companies that they have
through their access
to mind boggling and ultimately unreal amounts of
capital.
Because when they talk about all of these
billions, don't think that there's actually that many
$1,000,000,000
of money printed. They're all zeros in a
machine.
This is the issue.
If only a $100 exists in this world,
and Abu Akram has it.
And so I said, this is my amlou.
This is this is the guy. He never
lets me down. So I need to borrow
$100. So if he says to me, here
you can borrow the $100, son. Just pay
me back $100. He's a believer. That's what
he would do. But if he was not
a believer, he would say give me back
a $150 after a month.
Now only a $100 exists in the world.
How am I gonna pay him a $150
back?
All I can pay him is the 100
that exists. Right?
And then I'll be in his slavery.
This is a very simple understanding. All of
the ancient people knew it.
The Christians knew it. The Jews knew it.
The Jews knew it to this day. There's
a bank in Chicago, the Divan Bank. It's
run by Jews, Orthodox Jews. They deal with
our community because there are still some people
who hold the line and don't transact in
riba in in in in haram and ill
gotten
wealth.
And so they are accustomed to what? Doing
these non injurious transactions amongst themselves, but they'll
take
usury and riba from
people outside of their community.
But they said, okay, the Muslims don't do
business with us like that, then let them
do business with us like they're one of
us.
Usually, it's still considered a major sin in
the Catholic church.
They just did something, which is what? The
prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam mentioned that so
many things, zina and drinking and all these
things. The ummah is going to,
indulge in them
before the day of judgment.
And they'll say that these things are permissible.
And the companions were like flabbergasted. They said,
how could this happen?
The Rasulullah said, will they say that it's
halal even though it's obviously haram?
In one narration, the prophet told them that
they'll just call these things by names other
than what their names are. So we switch
from usury to interest. It's the same thing.
It's the same reality.
Part of the reason that the protestant reformation
was so successful in Europe
was that the protestants were the first to
break with the churches.
Ban on usury. So you see all of
this, the British East India Company, the Dutch
East India Company, all of these huge economic
powerhouses.
They start in the calf sorry, the Protestant
countries of Europe because they were the first
ones to
embrace this usurious predatory way of transacting.
And they made their wealth through what?
To smash and grab capitalism. Through conquering other
countries,
completely laying waste to those countries to the
point that many of them including the countries
that we're from are dysfunctional to this day.
Extracting the capital and then going back home.
Nobody It's not my problem anymore.
Just like happened in this country with the
subprime
mortgage
scandal not too long ago.
Predatory lending
for an asset which is solid. The house
is going to be there. The idea is
you can recover it. There are this scam,
it works with used cars as well. People
will sell a car to somebody with a
hefty down payment knowing that they can't pay
back for the car. They just repossess it
later on.
These are things that Rasool sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam came to end these things.
You cannot have an economy that has cancerous
growth
constantly. You cannot have it viral growth constantly
unless you're cancer, unless you're a virus.
And we were taught to live in such
a way that what? That we benefit ourselves
and benefit other people around us.
If you're a believer, if you're a believer,
if you're a believer, your every breath is
a breath of Jannah.
Your every deed is a deed of jannah.
Your every action is a action of jannah.
If you're a businessman,
if you're a worker who works in order
to earn a living,
Everything you sell in your store, this is
the merchandise of jannah.
Every hour that you make your wages,
this is an hour of jannah, these are
the wages of jannah.
We don't have If you're just here that
you're going to be Muslim for 2 hours
on a Friday, or for half an hour
on a Friday, or 15 minutes on a
Friday, and then go back to a different
life. I have bad news for you. That
life is worthless, and this coming to the
Jummah is also worthless except
for the father of Allah ta'ala. If we
make money at the expense of other people,
then I have bad news for you that
money will be a curse in this world,
and the day of judgement, it's going to
be a bigger curse.
If you follow the teachings of Rasulullah alaihi
wa sallam, know there are entire nations of
the earth that entered into this
Islam without one soldier, one army being sent
from overseas.
Sheikh Abdul Rahman is sitting right here. His
entire home entered into Islam. Indonesia is the
most populous Muslim country in the world.
Malaysia.
Before the inquisition was opened in the Philippines,
Philippines was the majority Muslim country. There was
no Muslim army ever came to conquer these
places.
What was
it? Good Muslim traders
who would trade, buy, sell honestly and with
ease, not be cheap with people.
And they would say a good word to
the people around them.
What's the problem? And what's the munasaba? The
connection with why am I talking about this?
In the context of GameStop's
stock being pumped through the sky.
The idea is this is
it's
illustrated by a anecdote
with regards to a great waliyah of Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala.
Rahimullah
from the Aslaf,
that she came
across a group of people, religious people who
were sitting around having a discussion about how
horrible the duniya is. And then after listening
for a while, she said, you people are
the ones most obsessed with the duniya. All
I've heard you do is talk about the
duniya.
Why is it that this country is exalting
that Melvin Capitalism,
the multibillion dollar capital group came down? Is
it gonna solve your problems or my problems?
Absolutely not. It's completely spiked.
And I'm also happy that they went down.
I think that these types of predatory outfits
are completely useless. But in the bigger picture,
it doesn't help me, it doesn't help you.
It doesn't help us put food on the
table in this world nor does it help
us go to Jannah.
What do we need is we need a
real solution.
We need to transact in halal in such
a way that it benefits us and it
also benefits those people around us.
So that they can think inside of their
head that these people have such a good
economic system. Maybe their spiritual system is
That's
the great victory.
But instead, what are we doing? We're sitting
here daydreaming about our place in in this
system that is completely bonkers. It's completely, it
makes no sense. It's about to collapse on
itself.
It's about to collapse on itself and what
we should be thinking is like, wow. This
is a really weird system. Nothing changed yesterday
or week from last week until next week.
Nothing changed about this company. The stores are
all the same. The merchandise is all the
same. The level at which they buy and
sell. Their profit margins are all the same.
The employee numbers are all the same.
Why? How strange is it that the stock
price is going to go up 15 times
and then it's gonna crash and it's probably
gonna be lower next week than it was
today?
And the entire system has to contort in
strange ways
such that small investors at the level of
people like myself are no longer allowed to
buy the stock. If you go log on
to Robinhood or onto all these other day
trading platforms,
It will only let you sell the stock.
It won't let you buy so as to
extract
very wealthy people from their precarious positions in
the stock that are over shorted.
How does this solve a problem? All it
is is we're beholden to the problem.
This is from the hikmah of the Arabs.
They say, don't look at the destroyed one
and comment about how destroyed he is.
If you wanna be successful, look at the
one who made it and then ask, how
did this person make it? See how did
this person make it.
But what have we done? We've sufficed ourselves
with a version of Islam that was handed
to us by a number of governments that
have no care for Allah and His Rasool
Sallallahu Alaihi
wa sallam which is constricted into what?
Into fancy recitations or into,
a couple of
bizarre and obscure polemical points that are minority
positions at best and
to make a big deal out of out
of these things. Whereas, if you want to
have a community that functions, you have to
think bigger than these types of things.
You wanna talk about capital? When you put
a dollar in the bank, the bank turns
around and loans that dollar 10 times and
charges Riba on that dollar for every 10
of those times that that that they loan
it out.
Tell me, how is that even possible?
It's all a fraud. It's all a fraud.
But what does that mean? When you pull
$1 out of the bank, what did you
do? You pulled $10 out of their liquidity
pool.
And we,
everyday, with the maximum
Islamic finance type question I get from people
is what?
Sheikh, is this Islamic mortgage really Islamic?
And I take my time and I explain,
you know, the difference between this, that and
the other thing. You can ask. We can
talk about it. It's no problem.
But why is it in this room there's
enough capital? We could buy 10 houses every
week
and we could pay each other back.
And there's ways within the sharia that it
could be profitable.
Instead of being a lender, you can be
an investor. You can model the structure the
the contract in such a way that the
one lending the money, instead of lending it,
be an investor, be a partner in the
in the house that's being bought.
You can actually make money on it. But
what is it? Because out of those a
100 houses that will be sold in the
year, between us bought and sold on cash.
One person won't pay back and they'll say,
oh, look, you know, I'm not here to
be like the for the Muslims and I
don't wanna get cheated. So what I'm gonna
what am I gonna do? I'm gonna go
and do business and invest all my money
with the very cheaters
that are going to be the ones that
actually destroy us one day.
That are the ones who waged war on
our forefathers.
That are the reason why black people are
poor in this country and white people have
access to opportunities that they don't.
Not because of black and white, look at
me.
But American race standards,
I'm neither black nor my white.
Who am I gonna cast my lot in
with? But what I know is what?
The pharaonic model.
The model of tyranny which is the archetype
of tyranny and of of evil
in a government, which is in the Quran
mentioned again and again and again is what?
Firaun exalted himself in the earth
and he divided people
and and made them into tears so that
they can all fight and resent one another.
And whoever does that, it's a sign for
me from the book of Allah Ta'ala that
these are not the people we want to
cast our lot in with.
I'm just the imam. I don't have the
capital to make these things happen.
These are solutions.
My part is to what? Discuss them with
the people.
The people's part is also that we take
each other by the hand and we invest
in these things, we make them a reality,
we make them happen even if we don't
buy and sell a 100 houses between us
every year.
We should at least choose to do business
with each other. The Rasul sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam himself, the first thing when he came
to Madinah Munawwara, what did he do?
He built the masjid. The second We've What
a wonderful masjid. Look at that chandelier as
like some legendary story I have yet to
hear but people talk about it.
What is this thing that he did, sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam, right after the
Masjid was built?
He asked, where do you people transact?
And they said the Jews have a marketplace.
They set the price that they buy and
sell at and we're forced to basically buy
and sell according to their prices and according
to their regime.
Did he say anything bad about the Jews?
No. He said, why don't we have our
own marketplace?
Good for them. Let them do what they
want with their money. Why don't we have
our own marketplace?
Why is it that we don't have our
own marketplace?
This is something we need to think about.
We need to look inside about and talk
about it instead of rejoicing.
Oh, look, some, you know, capital group that
we don't like fell apart. We need to
think about how are we going to survive
rather than rejoicing that other people are
destroyed. Why? Because our number isn't there in
the line as well. We're lambs to the
slaughter in the same nonsensical system.
Allah give us and give us the to
gather the courage to do those things that
we need to in order to survive and
also in order to thrive, in order to
be successful.