Hamzah Wald Maqbul – lssues Regarding Christmas ICC 12212019
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But today,
we'll take a break from our regular
real to just
to discuss something that's a little bit pertinent
for
for the time and place that we're in
right now,
which is when I was
like your guys' age.
Because,
at least in the massages that we used
to go to,
a majority of the people were not only
immigrants, but they were like
very fresh immigrants.
And we were small children.
So the community was not super integrated.
So
either people came to the mustard or they
didn't come to the mustard. From the people
who came to the mustard at Christmas and,
New Year's, Christmas Eve, and Christmas trees, and
Secret Santa, and this type of stuff, it
was not as, a Secret Santa, and this
type of stuff. It was not as,
was not as big of an issue. It
didn't seem like as a big of an
issue because we had a small community. It
was more tight knit
and,
socially, it was not as integrated in,
American society. Now, we
who are small children at that time have
grown up, English is our native language. We
have friends.
We have family.
We have,
people who, you know, have entered into Islam
in greater numbers
in the masjid, which is a a blessing
from Allah in
fact.
And
with it comes a new set of challenges,
which is every year it seems more and
more people will ask me
what do we do for Christmas? Is it
okay to take an invitation if someone asks
you to, like, come to their house, to
celebrate with them? Is it okay to buy
gifts from people? Is it okay to receive
gifts from people? Etcetera, etcetera.
And,
although
Muslims are not it's not part of Islam
to, like, be, like,
a general in the war on Christmas.
Understand what I'm saying?
Like, Christmas is not the people celebrating Christmas
is not the problem with the world.
We don't celebrate Christmas, and it's not part
of our game.
But Christmas itself is not like the problem
with the world.
If you see somebody, if you see like
whatever, Jim on the street. Okay? The issue
that Jim has is not that he gives,
you know, has a Christmas tree in his
house and that he's giving gifts to his
children or whatever.
The issue is what is kufr, that he
either knows Allah nor does he know the
rasulullah
alaihi wa sallam. He doesn't believe in the
Quran. He doesn't believe in the rasulullah salallahu
alaihi wa sallam. He doesn't know that Allah
is 1 or he doesn't bring it into
his heart. The kufr is the problem. The
other things
are secondary issues that can be,
know, like ironed out. But what happens is
because especially when
not based on knowledge,
the nubs when it reacts things that reacts
in 1 of 2 extremes.
One is like, what's the big deal? What's
the problem? It's not even a religious holiday
anyway anymore,
which I think a very solid argument can
be made for that. But it's known to
everybody that origin of Christmas is a religious
holiday. Even though most people don't celebrate it
religiously anymore, people don't go to church. It
has nothing to do with with, saying that
Islam has nothing to do with anything. It's
become like this kind of a consumerist
orgy. And
and if you wanna know about what my
thoughts are regarding that type of thing, you
can go to the soundcloud and listen to
what I said on, you know, the whatever
Black Friday,
Friday,
with regards to going shopping, buying stuff that
you don't need. It's itself a problem.
So there's one
one,
extreme which is like, what's the big deal?
We can celebrate. It's not a big deal,
which is wrong.
It's wrong. Chris Christmas is what? Christmas is
originally a holiday of certain
of certain,
parts of the Christian,
religion.
In the early part of this
nations,
colonial history,
many of the Christians didn't celebrate Christmas. The
pilgrims, you know, the pilgrims and Mayflower and
all that stuff. They didn't actually didn't celebrate
Christmas because it's not really originally,
anything,
having to do with the religion of
and it doesn't even have anything to do
with the religion of Paul. It doesn't have
anything to do with the religion of the
Nicene Creed centuries passed before it even becomes
a big deal.
It's not even on that day.
And one might say, well, at least our
spirit, you know, in spirit, we're celebrating the
birth. He's a member of Allah. You know,
okay. We acknowledge it's not the wrong day.
You know why it's the 25th December?
It's the 25th December because there is a
pagan cult in ancient Rome,
the cult of Mithra, which Mithra the word
Mithra itself is a it's an old Indo
Aryan word, which means like a demigod, like
an idol.
Cognate of the like Sanskrit word basically which
means friend. But in the ancient divested Iranian
language,
supposedly
it meant like God. And so the culture
of Mitra is a Persian
cult of Sol Invictus, worshipping the sun basically.
The Sol Invictus in the, in the, in
the Roman religion was
Apollo, the conquering
the conquering sun god.
So do you know how the Romans became
Christian? Right? Constantine
was
a co emperor.
Right? There was something in the, in in
the in the history of the Roman Empire
called the Tetrarchy. The empire was so big.
There was no text messages, emails, WhatsApp. So
they can't communicate with each other and it's
really difficult to run a huge empire like
that. So the tetrarchy was what? They split
the empire into 2 halves. There's the east
and the west and as the name tetrarchy
indicates,
the east had a senior emperor and a
junior emperor, and the West had a senior
emperor and junior emperor. So tetrarchy, it means
rule of 4.
And so what ends up happening is the
Tetrarchy obviously
lasted for some time. It sounds like a
dumb idea and inevitably it broke down at
some point. They started fighting with each other.
So one member of the Tetrarchy was was,
the Emperor Constantine.
And so he marched his armies from the
west to the east,
and there was a battle. And on the
eve of the battle, basically,
like a number of the soldiers saw a
dream that,
and in the dream, basically, he was shown
that if
you fight in the name of the whatever
the Saul Invictus, you'll be victorious.
At first, he thought it was what? At
first, he thought it was Apollo.
So there are 3 historical records of which
God he, worshiped and asked for victory on
that map. 2 of them are Christian sources,
and the Christian sources say that that that
he,
prayed and sought victory from Jesus Christ. And
the third is a pagan source. And the
pagan source says it's what? It's solid victus.
It's the sun the sun god Apollo. Apollo
isn't the sun himself, but he's the god
of the sun. And so what ends up
happening is later on
what historians many historians alleged is that he
thought it was Apollo. Later on, the Christians
convinced him that the sun god is actually
Jesus Christ.
Why?
Think about this for a second. Like, you
don't all make sense. I know it's like,
you know, you're getting confused. It all makes
sense in one second.
There was a very popular cult in ancient
Rome. Ancient Rome was like India, like Hinduism
where they worship like every god and, you
know, everyone worships everyone else's god. It was
just like a complete free for all. So
this cult of Mithra came from the
And they they they worshiped as the sun
god. That's why Mithra's birthday is what? It's
the winter solstice.
Why? Because it's one of the day is
the shortest.
After the winter solstice, the day just gets
keeps getting longer and longer and longer.
So when what happens is when,
Constantine they
convinced him that it wasn't Apollo that gave
you victory. It was Jesus
Christ.
There's a conflation between both of these things
that end up happening.
And so, Mitra,
he dies on Easter, and he's raised on
the 3rd day. And his symbol is what?
It's an inverted sword, which looks like what?
If you take a sword and put it
upside down, what does it look like? It
looks like the cross.
Right? So all of these weird pagan rituals
that happened with, they basically Christianize.
This is why, one of the he mentioned
that Ibn Kathir mentioned that if anyone ever
tells you that the Romans became Christians,
don't believe them. And if anyone ever tells
you that the Christians became Romans, then believe
them. Right? So that December 25th is not
just an innocuous
day that, okay, what even if it's the
wrong day, you know, we don't know exactly
what they said.
Even if it's the wrong day, but like
at least we're celebrating the prophet of Allah.
You're not celebrating the profit of Allah. What
are you celebrating?
Some weird old like ancient Roman pagan cult.
Extreme. The other extreme is however, what just
because it's the wrong thing, it
doesn't
mean you have to be a jerk to
people around you.
That like your neighbors and whatever, you have
to you know, you guys are mentioned. You
guys are worshiping the pig. To them, that's
not what they're doing, you know, in their
mind. And being mean to people is a
bad way of getting them to,
listen to the truth.
Being jerk to people, partner only, being a
general in the war on Christmas is a
bad way of,
of getting them to, listen to the truth.
So what a Muslim should do is with
great dignity,
with some with some respect,
why not because of who you are and
who I am, but because of the the
the dean of Allah, and his Rasool salallahu
alaihi wa sallam. We say, we don't celebrate.
This is not a holiday that we celebrate.
We have our own
Allah gave in Israel
gave us 2 eeds that we celebrate.
And if this is your holiday that we
celebrate, you know, even though we don't follow
your religion, but we acknowledge that you follow
your religion and we respect that. We're not
here to, like, you know, like, talk bad
to you about it. So, you know, you
guys have your holiday and enjoy. If they
give you gifts, as long as the acceptance
of the gift is not considered a ritual
act, you can accept the gift.
And my encouragement to people is that we
should also give people gifts as well. Not
on Christmas, on on our our own on
our own eats and in general regularly as
well, especially our neighbors and things like that.
If someone says to you, Merry Christmas, you
don't say Merry Christmas back to them. But
if you say happy holidays back to them,
like, nobody's gonna die.
It's good, you know, it's good character that
we show share with people.
It's a holiday. Right? You guys get the
day off from school. You guys get 2
weeks off from school. Right? It's a holiday.
Right? That's a matter of fact. It's not
a religious
So if you say happy holidays back to
somebody, nobody's gonna die. What are you doing?
You're showing the prophetic,
example of good character, and that's always a
good thing. But then we don't cross the
line. We don't cross the line and then
participate in the parties. And worse than that
is what? Okay. Somebody has a Christmas party.
It's different for some people. You know, if
somebody is like, both of my parents are
from whatever, from Uzbekistan or Iraq, and like
all of my family is here, and that's
who I'm gonna spell out, you know, spend
my weekend with. It's easy for them to
say, I don't celebrate Christmas.
Some people here are, you know, accepting Islam
and our families are still, like,
not Muslims or some part of the family
is still not Muslim or some of us
married into people who are converts or have
some part of the family that's still not
Muslim.
And it's really funny because when I talk
about these things, some people an attitude. They're
like, oh, shit. You're easy for you to
say. You don't have any non Muslim relatives.
So how do you know? I don't talk
about my personal life up on the because
the is about Islam. It's not about the
life of Hamza. Right?
But at any rate, the the deen is
the deen. The deen don't change whether your
relatives are just out of the other thing.
If you have relatives
and family members, it's the only time you
see them in the year and there's like
some gathering or whatever.
You can go. You can go. If there's
no business, there's no need for you to
be there, it's better for you not to
go.
But for example, someone married married someone who's
new to the deed or someone themselves has
accepted Islam some years ago, and they have
a number of family members they have to
meet or whatever. And for some reason or
another person has to go to one of
these parties and gatherings.
Permissibility to go.
Once the bottle is open, it doesn't matter
who it is. You have to get up
and leave.
You have to get up and leave. And
for somebody who doesn't have a need to
be there,
but they go anyway for whatever other reason,
professional, networking, friends, whatever, once the bottle opens,
it's haram for you to be in that
room. You have to get up and leave.
You have to get up and leave. There's
no being in that room once the bottle
starts to open. And people will see that
when you leave, once the alcohol Or you
don't have to talk because they're not Muslims.
You know what I mean? If you tell
them drinking is haram, they don't care. They're
probably just gonna mock Islam anyway for you
saying that. So you don't have to make
a big fit or a big fit about
it. What do you do? You just get
up and leave. People may even make a
face at you when you leave, but they'll
respect you. They'll respect you. Even if they
never admitted inside of their heart, they'll respect
you and they'll remember that their whole life.
That this alcohol that we enjoy so much,
all of us go inside of our head.
It does nothing except for rude people's lives.
And this person
could have enjoyed with us, but they used
their brain more than,
used their emotions and they got up and
left. It will make an impact on them.
And even if it doesn't, you save your
deeds, save your honor, save your dunya, save
your don't sit in those gatherings. Those are
gatherings of heedlessness of those are like gatherings
in which shaytan has the upper hand. Don't
harm yourself. Don't kill yourself by by just
trying to be a nice guy. It's better
for everybody. Once the bottle opens, just get
up and leave. Allah
give all of us, to give,
good,
give a good example of Islam for ourselves,
for our families, for our relatives, for the
Muslims, for the people of other faiths. Allatul
give us a tofik of showing good character
to other people.
Inshallah, one day all of those people are
celebrating Christmas. It's not far away that they'll
be in the masjid as well and they'll
be the ones who are celebrating with us
as well.
And you'll receive the reward for that. Don't
think it's far fetched. It will happen even
weird and crazy people. You see Donald Trump
and Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi one day,
you know,
celebrating celebrating a eve instead of Christmas. It's
nothing is None of these things are weird.
All of these things people thought there were
even crazier people than them. People thought there's
no way this person will, end up becoming
a Muslim, and they died on
their lips.
And so like to prepare for that day,
remember, don't be so mean or such a
jerk with people right now that you messed
it up for for that day as well.
But still keep your principles.