Hamzah Wald Maqbul – Profitable Venture The Spread Of Islam By Merchants & Mystics DS Retreat 2017
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AI: Transcript ©
Muhammad
and Allah Ali. He was
bad.
For that very
wonderful
and
inspiring introduction.
This is not the first time I've been
here. This is like my neighborhood, Masjid.
So I come here very often.
And,
has
a very beautiful quality.
He is like a bear, you know, with
the the are like his cubs,
and he's very protective. And he really,
like,
if you try to mess with anyone, try
to mess with any of the teachers at
the Islam, you'll see his claws come out
and you don't wanna see that. So, be
nice. Everybody behave.
Behave. Because Mufti Saab is a very
respectable person. If you don't respect him through
being good to him, I fear that you
may have to learn to respect him the
hard way.
The other thing is I think I suspect
one of the reasons that the the the
introduction was so long is I've been told
lunch is gonna
be a little bit late. So we had
to kill kill a little bit of time.
So the truth has come out. Mufti Saab
has good.
Lunch is late. Now we can start with
the the actual program.
I forgot to announce. Just for the record,
our will be at 145.
1 45.
So the topic I was given
is a topic that has to do with
an intersection of a couple of concepts in
deen
as well as history.
And the concept in deen
Deen primarily starts with what? It starts with
the idea
of
All actions are according to what? According to
their intention.
So this was a very important,
presentation that Mufti Mohammed bin Adam was giving
with regards to
parenting.
The whole idea is if you just teach
your children to become Muslims out of habit
or if you force them to pray because
they're afraid of you or because otherwise they're
not going to get
candy or allowance or not going to be
allowed to, you know, play with their friends
and all of these things. What is the
benefit of that? Is there any benefit of
it? Your intention is the child is doing
something for an intention other than Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala's sake. Is the child gonna benefit
from that, act of worship?
Absolutely not.
This is an idea that is very simple,
but unfortunately
it
has missed many people.
And one of the reasons it has missed
many people is you will see we're look
we're sitting in a masjid.
It's in a kind of a quasi neo
Ottoman style that the masjid has built one
freestanding dome without any pillars on the inside,
and it has,
wonderful calligraphy that is,
made by hand by artisans that came from
overseas.
In style and form, it's very similar to
a classical masjid.
The people look around the person to the
left and to the right of you. Everybody
is dressed up in their medieval vestments and
garments with their beards and with their their
heads covered. You know, when the people drive
down North Avenue and looks as
bunch of bunch of freaks from a time
machine
got together and sat down. But the sad
fact is I wish we were the freaks
from the time machine. Unfortunately, the reality is
what? Is that the outside is different. It
looks freakish. The inside is almost no different
than what's on the inside of other people.
Who can
blame us? We have
lived in a place
and the effect of that place has dyed
us and has
colored us. And deen and iman is built
on
rationality.
The very Arabic language which was chosen for
the Quran to be taught in is is
an Arabic language. Allah
He describes the relationship of this Arabic language
with the Quran.
We made it in Arabic Quran. We sent
it down as an Arabic Quran
so that you can be people of rationality.
You can be rational people. You can understand
what
what what the logical connection between things are.
The English language is the opposite of Arabic
in so many ways.
And one of the most basic qualities of
the English language is completely irrational.
It's completely irrational.
You cannot learn English grammar. Some around the
seventies in America, they stopped teaching English grammar
to children because it makes no sense whatsoever.
So what happens, you just learn it like,
you know, from from from just from listening
to other people speak, you learn how to
speak as well. It's a extremely irrational language.
Arabic is a very precise language and it's
a very rational language. English
has so many strata of grammar that are
that that are acting at the same time.
You have the actual English language which is
the Anglo Saxons, the the language that they
spoke. So if you want to see what
that language was like, go and look up
Beowulf.
Right? It's a old it's a old, epic
tale about, you know, the slaying of of
of of of of Grondell, some sort of
weird
demon figure and the heroic epic tale of
Beowulf. It's a completely unintelligible language. You won't
understand any of it. So impose upon that
the stratum of of Latin, oppose upon that
the stratum of French, oppose upon the impose
upon that all these kind of weird loan
words you get from Celtic and all these
other languages. It's completely a mixed up and
confused pot.
And it's an example of what? It's an
example of the confusion that pervades
the way we think and the way we
think about things, the way that we do
things.
So like in Urdu, there's a very interesting
saying in Urdu. They say some people like
to grab their nose like this. Some people
like to grab their nose like that, you
know. I guess the the result may be
the same but one is a more direct
and logical way of doing things. Now tell
me something.
Is it haram to harm another Muslim?
Yes. Is it haram to harm another human
being for no reason? Yeah. It's
haram. It's it's you're gonna get a sin
for it if you keep doing it, you
don't repent. It may take you to the
hellfire.
Okay? Is it far to kiss the black
stone in Hajj?
No. But still have the ummas having the
Royal Rumble, WWF
brawl and trying to beat down the nations
of the earth and screaming Allahu Akbar as
if they're like whatever, like about to, like,
break the idol of hubal inside of the
Kaaba or something like that. Why?
Because there's no there's no rationality in the
mind anymore.
There's no ability to understand what's more important,
what's less important.
One of greatest foundations of the deen is
what?
All actions are according to their intentions.
So this is something it's a very simple
concept. You say, oh my goodness. Look, he
did like 2 bachelor degrees in
philosophy and all this like 20 minute introduction
from Mufti Hajj only to tell us something
that we already knew. The fact of the
matter is we all know it, but still
nobody nobody's implementing it. Guess what? Sahaba radiAllahu
ta'ala and whom implemented it.
They understood
intuitively and they implemented it. So when according
to prophecy of Rasulullah
salallahu alaihi wa sallam, they conquered the nations
of the world, they implemented these these
small and simple pieces of understanding that Rasulullah
salahu alaihi wa sallam gave in very amazing
and in in very,
awe inspiring
ways. So one of the ways that they
implemented this
this,
piece of understanding is what?
Is that when somebody says to you, you,
Islam was spread by the sword,
in one way they're telling the truth, in
one way they're they're not telling the truth.
How are they telling the truth? The fact
of the matter is is that the Roman
Empire, the Persian Empires, they were both unseated
by the armies of the Sahaba
And
subsequently, the Muslim,
governments that ran under theocratic rule, rule, meaning
rule by the Sharia itself, they unseated a
great number of nations.
In some ways, the entire world system that's
there, the UN, the WTO, all of these
different economic and political alliances,
they're all there to ensure that that that
never happens again. But that's a different topic.
It's neither here nor there. You can disagree
with me if you want to. And who
really, who cares? That's not really what we're
talking about right now. If people don't understand
the basics, then to talk about that system
is a complete pipe dream.
Yes. The Muslims unseated the Romans as tax
collectors.
The Muslims unseated the Persians as tax collectors.
They unseated the Romans and Persians as givers
of law.
In the Roman law,
a man who marries his wife, his wife
becomes his property. He can literally kill her,
and the police is not gonna come and
say anything. Why? Because she's his property.
In the Persian law, a man can marry
his sister.
Prophet Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam told the
sahaba radiAllahu anam specifically when you go to
the Persians,
if they wish to keep their religion, that's
that's their thing. We're not gonna force them
to convert but this one specific practice that
they have, you're to end it by force.
The
system of governance,
the system of economy. Right? One of the
greatest sources of slavery in the in the
Roman Empire was what? Was debt slavery. You
know, for example, a person goes and takes
a mortgage out on their house. If you
can't pay it off, they would literally sell
you as a slave. You would forfeit your
freedom, and you would have to pay off
your your wage through the price of your
own, freedom.
These types of things, yes. They were ended
by the sword. And this type of corruption
and this type of
zulum, oppression, people do not give these things
up except for by
force. They implement them by force and they
are given up by the by force. They
live by the sword and they ultimately will
die by the sword.
This is a reality.
This is a reality. Nobody no If a
person is going to be a person who
lies and cheats for a living, a person
who's built his entire empire, built his entire
business by lying to people, cheating people, coercing
people. That person is not gonna do what's
right because you asked them too nicely.
Do you understand what I'm saying?
So from that point of view, those economic
and political systems of, the Sahaba radiAllahu ta'ala
anhu ended them. And the Muslims ended them
wherever they found them traditionally. Unfortunately, now we
have people with beards and with turbans that
propagate these systems of. Traditionally, the people with
the beard and turban were the one that
they knew that that those people were scared.
When they see these guys coming, that's it.
The jig is up. That that system is
going to be ended.
But if someone tells you Islam is a
religion spread by the sword, it's completely and
patently false.
It is completely patently false. Why? What's the
point of making somebody, convert to Islam at
the tip of a sword? If
if
all actions are according to their intention and
you force somebody to convert at the end
of a sword, is their conversion going to
be worth anything in this dunya or in
the akhirah?
Absolutely not. It's absolutely going to be 100%
and totally worthless.
There are places in the world where conversions
were done like that, where mass conversions to
a religion were done like that, and those
conversions
are, to this day,
either washed away or completely and patently unsincere.
This is a small part of history very
few people know about. Iran, which is a
a country that has become synonymous with,
Shiite theocratic rule. Iran was for most of
the history of Islam, a country that was
a majority population of Sunnis.
You have people like Imam Ghazali, you have
Fakhruddin
Razi, Imam Muslim. These people are all Iranians.
If you look at per anyone here studied
Mufti riyaz? Maybe he's still here. Has anyone
here studied Persian literal literature? All the canonical
poets of the Persian language Persian has a
very rich,
language of of literature, most of which has
to deal with spirituality and Islam.
Of the canonical poets of the Persian language,
they're all Sunnis.
Jalaluddin Rumi is a Sunni.
Right? Hafiz is Hafiz Shirazi is a Sunni.
Sheikh Saadi is a Sunni. All of these
people, these are all these are all, people
of the Sunni tradition. Iran,
what what happened, right, there was a,
a a a heretical sect,
that that that essentially as a act of
political violence
Empire, there there are a group of Turks,
uneducated Turks that said we're gonna become Shia
just to fight against the Ottoman
Empire. And that was the beginning of the
the the dola of the Safaouya. Right? They
call them
which means in
Turkish,
redhead. They used to wear red hats, and
they became Shia just to just to have
some sort of religious propaganda in order to
build their state. And they took over Iran,
and they force converted fervent.
They're
are very fervent. They're very religiously fervent people
in their.
Right? The Shias in Iran are completely irreligious
people. Why? Because it was forced down their
throat.
If you go to Iran or you see
Iran on the news, they don't seem like
they have all this,
this kind of clerical class that's ruling them,
but the average people seem to really not
like them. Why is that? It's because people
force them.
If someone is has to do something by
force, whether it's right or wrong, a human
person a human being, their jibillah, the nature
Allah created them on is what? Is that
unless they want to do something, if you
try to coerce them to do anything, they're
just going to be halfhearted in
it. And in the dunya for Iran, it
seems to work. Maybe they still have their
country. I mean, politically it's still viable. Right?
In the akhirah, if somebody is doing something
and they're not really their heart is not
into it, if they're going to come to
Allah and say, yeah, Well, I just prayed
and fasted because
other people made me do it. This is
a sign not of iman, this is a
sign of what? Of nifa. Literally comes in
the hadith of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam. That certain people when they enter into
their graves and the angel Munkar and Nakir
asked them, you know, who is your lord
and what is your religion and what do
you say about the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam? They'll literally answer this. We don't really
know. We're not a 100% sure. We just
used to say what other people used to
say.
Because that's a time that a person is
not going to be able to tell a
lie about.
So coming back to the Sahaba radiAllahu anhu,
politically and economically,
they they imposed the hegemony of Islamic rule
over a great number of lands. The Ottoman
Empire and other, empires, Abdul Rahman, Adakil, Banu
Umayyah, and Andalusia, all of these different places,
they imposed political and economic,
hegemony, supremacy of Islam in these places
which sounds kind of like daunting to like
non muslims but it was really actually quite
a good thing. Why? Because in Europe, they
had something called the feudal system
where you have a king and his relatives.
They formed the the noble class,
the the noble class that own land. And
everybody who's not part of that noble class,
they're either part of the clergy, either part
of the church, or they're regular people. So
the few people who are part of the
church, they are exempted from taxes. All the
regular people, they have the burden of taxes
and their their their freedom is tied to
the land that they live on. They neither
own the land, neither can they live leave
that land ever. They're doomed to work that
land, work that land, work that land. What
ends up happening is that the the produce
from the land, the crops that they they
that they,
harvest from that land, they will keep a
small percentage of it and a majority of
it will go to the feudal owner of
that land. So how do you economically think
these lands were? Were they very highly productive
or were they not?
They're utterly a catastrophe. This is why Europe
was in the dark ages.
The feudal system was still in in place
in France until what happened, the French Revolution
happened. Anyone here read about the French Revolution?
Anyone? Was it was it a peaceful thing?
Absolutely not. Wash the entire country in blood.
So many people just killing so many people
out of the collective and suppressed rage and
anger of centuries
of of centuries of what?
France was they called it the bride of
the church.
France was one of the most practicing Catholic
dependably
practicing Catholic countries in Europe, and it was
one of the last seats of political power
for the Catholic church. But even even France,
because of the that the church was complicit
in regards to the feudal system, even France
is now one of the most accurately secular
and and anti religious countries in all of
Europe. Why? Because the the oppression, it's like
a spring, you coil it up more and
more and more, and bam it pops one
day, and, that's it. Then everything is going
to fall apart. That the anger of that
that that that that coiled up spring snapping,
that anger will not
leave everything it will destroy.
It will make complete and total chaos to
the point where now you have entire nations
of the earth where the belief in God
itself is considered the
people committed it in his name and without
his name. This is by the way an
important. These are all important lessons for us
as Muslims. Why?
Because Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said, you
will follow the people who came before you,
hands breath by hands breath to the point
where if they go into a lizard hole,
you would go into the same lizard hole
like they did just because they went into
the same lizard hole. And unfortunately, this is
what our community is doing as well. So
beware. Someone say, oh, I'm never gonna rule
a country.
Yes. I've seen how you guys run things.
You're probably never gonna run a country.
But you will run your local masjid. Be
careful not to make zulman people on new
Muslims and on on women and on minorities
and on, you know, peep the poor attendees
of the masjid, etcetera etcetera, lest you completely
destroy your masjid just like other people destroyed
their nations.
What happened when the Muslims conquered places like
what?
Like like like Spain,
like Sicily, like Malta.
Right? Like like the,
Anatolia. You know what they call Turkey now?
That's not where turk Turkic speaking people are
from. Turkic speaking people, where is their homeland?
It's like Lake Baikal. It's somewhere between Mongolia
and Siberia in the far northeast.
They conquered these lands from who? From the
Roman
Empire. Why was the Ottoman state successful?
You know when the Muslims conquered Constantinople. Right?
The the the title of this talk is
merchants and mystics. Right? Let's talk about merchants
and let's talk about mystics.
When the Muslims conquered Constantinople, which is the
was which was the capital of the Roman
Empire. One of the real titles of the
Ottoman Sultan
other than being the Amir al Mu'minin and
the Khalifa of the Muslims. One of the
real titles was that he's the emperor of
Rome. Why? Because he unseated the Roman emperor.
The Roman emperor for until since the time
of,
of of Nero was not somebody who was
elected by the senate, rather they were just
military commanders that some of them unseated the
other ones. Then the church got upset. These
guys are Muslims. They unseated. No. We're not
gonna let acknowledge them as the emperor of
Rome. Literally, it's still the Roman Empire. The
the seed of it sits in Constantinople and
its traditional capital.
For more than a century, probably for about
2 centuries before the Muslims conquered Constantinople,
all the lands on every direction from a
Constantinople was already under Muslim rule.
The
European historians, they say, oh, well, Muslims taking
over Constantinople. It's not such a big deal
because the city was so weak already. The
city was so weak already. It was in
decline for centuries.
And the population had been declining,
and the economic importance of the city was
declining. And so the Muslims, they just did
something that was logical. It's like we left
it anyway. That's they're taking it over. It's
not a big deal.
Why was the population declining?
Tell me. Why was the economic economy of
that place declining?
Because now the people who are farmers and
the people who are artisans that can produce
goods, they have a marketplace where they can
sell their goods and get a fair price
for them and not get ripped off,
which is is where in the markets of
Syria, in the markets of Iraq, in the
markets of Egypt,
the Muslims did what? They first straightened out
the economic situation, and then afterward, this talk
of conquest and this talk of changing religions,
all of these other things happened. And you
see literally
a,
an example for that in the modern time
as well.
Turkey is a very ex a successful,
country,
you know, in in contemporary in the contemporary
political landscape, and it's one of the few
places that are economically successful and also,
amicable
to Islam and to Muslims.
The government that did this in Turkey, which
is now politically so powerful and everyone resents
them and whatever, you may like them, you
may not like them, how did they become
powerful? Did they become powerful for people up
before being late to Jumuah?
No. Did they become powerful because they, beat
people up for not having a fist length
beard?
No. Actually, as far as I can tell,
their their president, he he is clean shaven.
He doesn't have a beard at all. Did
they become powerful? How? By making people, you
know, come to the Masjid on 15th of
Shaban?
No.
What is it? Turkish economy was in free
fall. The if inflation was so bad, every
year they used to delete if it was
a good year, they would delete 2 zeros
from the from the currency, and if it
was a bad year, they would delete 3
zeros.
The the the exchange rate was literally like
a ticker. Now they've stabilized the exchange rate.
So if you wanna buy a Coke, it'll
cost you 1 lira.
The is the word for 1 in Turkish.
If you ask them how much is the
Coke old man shopkeeper, it's a because it's
1,000,000 liras. Out of habit because for most
of his life, Coke literally used to cost
a1000000
liras. But now it's just one.
They rectified what? Help people with their dunya
first. And that what opens the heart up
for for you to talk about their with
them. And coming back to the sahaba radiallahu
anhu, they conquered all of these places. They
didn't force anyone to become Muslim. And forget
about within their lifetimes, literally it takes 2,
3, 400 years
for a very slow and gradual process
of converting people to Islam and bringing people
into the fold of Islam
until
Syria,
Egypt, Palestine,
Iraq, all of these places become majority Muslim
countries.
So imagine
the sahaba of the Allahu Anhoom said now
Amar bin Assar
is is is the governor over Egypt, majority
of the Egyptians that now we associate them
with Al Azhar al Sharif and we associate
them with the beautiful recitation of the Quran.
Majority of them are what? They're not not
Muslims. They're Christians.
Majority of Syrians, Syria, we we associated at
least until very recently with,
with elm and knowledge and with iman and
with all of these good things and all
of these things. Allah
helped the people of Syria from the difficulty
that they're going through right now. That same
Syria, it wasn't it wasn't Muslim. Saidna
Mu'awiya ruled ruled from Damascus and the majority
of the people living around him were not
Muslims.
Constantinople Sultan Mohammed Fatih.
There's a hadith of the musnad, of Imam
Ahmad and, of the of Hakim.
It's a Sahih hadith in which Rasulullah sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam said, one day, Constantinople
That one day, Constantinople
will be conquered.
And what a wonderful commander will the commander
of that army be, and what a wonderful
army will that army
be? Imagine, masha'Allah, I got Shabash from Mufti
Min Hajj. Sultan Mohammed Fatih got Shabash from
Rasulullah
Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala. He's not the father of any
of your men, salallahu alayhi wa sallam. Rather,
he is the messenger of Allah.
When he speaks, he speaks with authority of
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
And he is the seal of the prophets.
He gave Shabashta Sultan Mohammed Fatih left, right,
in front of him, behind him, all of
them almost all of them are Christians.
Very very few very very few,
Muslims with him. Majority of the people in
Constantinople Constantinople are Christians.
Guess what? The markets of Constantinople for 200
years before Sultan Mohammed Fateh conquered the city,
the markets were run by the Muslims.
The Christian emperor
said to the Muslims, come please let your
traders set up their markets in the city.
Otherwise, the entire economy is gonna collapse.
And what did the Ottomans say? They said,
we'll let you do that if you allow
our qadhi, our judge into into the market.
Because you people transact in riba and you
cheat one another. You're a feudal system and
this other nonsense. You people are not reliable.
You know how nowadays people say, oh, man,
I hate doing business with Muslims.
They said, you know what? We cannot do
business with you people. We'll send our traders,
and we'll we'll we'll, make your markets run,
but let our judge, our Qadi, come and
and adjudicate between people and their and their
disputes. Otherwise, we're not gonna do it. He
said, okay. Come on. Let them in.
When Sultan Mohammed Fateh conquered that
noble, which was in population decline literally for
centuries,
what did they do? They brought injustice and
they brought in fairness and they brought in
what?
The the believer is somebody who's easy to
deal with, easy to get along with, rasulullah
salallahu alaihi wa sallam said. So many ahadith
about the prophet
what? They have to do with how you
should do business with one another.
There's a story, perhaps you've heard of it
before.
A person may wonder, like, what's the point
of a story like
this? That a Sahabi, he he goes and
opens up a shop, brings his material merchandise,
opens up his shop, and he's buying and
selling, buying and selling, buying and selling. After
some months pass by, somebody buys something from
him.
And then a couple of days later, he
goes, you know what? I don't like your
product. Give me my money back. So he
goes, here, here's your money back. He takes
the product and then he starts taking the
shop down. So what are you doing?
He says, I heard the message of Allah
say that whoever returns a transaction from a
person
after,
even though they didn't have to do it.
But just why? Because they wanted to just
go easy on the person.
He said, I'll give them the the the
promise of Jannah. And so I just wanted
to be part of the, the glad tid
alaihi wa sallam. I wanted to make amal
on
this.
What do you know? This one one thing
which sounds to you and me because we
think about what? Even though we look like,
again, like from the pages of some sort
of medieval comic book, but we're the inside
like other people are. So to you and
me, this seems like what? This is like,
what's the big deal? Walmart does the same
thing.
Well, guess what? Everybody's converting to the religion
of Walmart now.
Even our masajid are like Walmart. People say,
I went to such and such place. Masajid
are so
beautiful. They're huge. And they have
this class and that class, and you can
learn to cook, and you can there's a
political action network getting together, and we're gonna
go to this protest, and we're gonna do
all of these other things, and the mayor
comes in, you know, each samosas with us
in Ramadan, and the senators eating gulab jaman
and Eid. And this all these things are
happening. Our masjid is amazing. It's so vibrant.
I say, your
masjid is amazing. There's only one small thing
missing that would make it nice.
So what? Just a little bit of deen.
I don't ever hear anybody talking about deen.
None of the kids have
none of the children are reading the Quran.
Nobody makes the dhikr of Allah ta'ala. There's
no students of knowledge. There's no one who
stands up on the pulpit and speaks the
haqq from the from from with authority. Right?
Who's the representative of Rasool Allahu
alayhi wa sallam? The
ulema are who? The heirs of the prophets.
They're the next of kin of the prophets.
The heir who inherits from you. It's not
Bill down the road. It's your son. It's
your brother. It's your father.
Like the next of kin of the the
I don't see that. I just see, you
know, like a a full on uncle, doctor
engineer,
activist uncle who doesn't know
too much about Dean, but he's gonna tell
us about this. I see those things.
Now what am I saying? Am I saying
it's haram to have a big mustered, parking
lot?
Parking lot's wonderful. They opened up the other
entrance, on this, swift road over here. Ever
since then, I come here for instead of
other masajid because it's really easy to get
in and out of. It's wonderful.
What's wrong? Political activism is wrong? Absolutely not.
Go and have Gulab Jamun with the with
the senator.
You know?
What's wrong? Is it wrong to have, like,
classes for this and that and the other
thing? Absolutely not. Learn how to cook, sew,
archery,
program code, you know, practice the SAT, the
ACT, the USMLE, the DAT, the whatever else
it is, the FBI, the c whatever you
wanna do. You figure all of it out,
the CBS, the NBC.
You do all of it. Do it all.
But what's
to save you.
That same policy, if the the niya is
for the service of Islam,
the idea is what? That that same return
policy literally can make your dunya and make
your akhirah. Both for the one who takes
the return and for the one who who
receives it. Why? Because that person is also
gonna think like, wow. This person was so
good to me. They did ihsan to me
even though they could've ripped me off. Now
their ears open that they're going to hear
something about
Dean. Look at the flip side. The British
ruled over the Indian subcontinent for how long?
300 maybe excess
more than 200 years though.
Right? So 300 years ago will be like
17/17.
The Mughal Empire still had some some reign.
Although, maybe that may not be that far
out off the market, you know, that I
think about it. But complete rule over the
subcontinent without a challenger is 200 some odd
years. How many how many people in the
subcontinent are Christian right now?
Almost nobody.
Almost
nobody.
Why? Because you cannot show up to somebody's
country
and be like, here, let me rob everything
that you have and treat you like garbage
and whatever. And here's the gospel by the
way, Jesus, you know, saves.
Doesn't work that way. You take your Jesus
and get lost. Where we have nothing no
connection with it whatsoever. We have
connection with it whatsoever. Obviously, we wouldn't say
that because Sayna'issa alayhi salam is one of
the and behalf of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
But this is this is something that for
example, Hindus in in the in the Indian
subcontinent, they resent Christianity for that reason. And
they say bad things about Sinai Islam because
of that reason as as
well. Even though they don't know that these
people are not the ones who represent him,
alayhis salaam.
The idea is if you come to people
like that, they're not going to change. What
was the thing that changed people?
The merchants of the Sahaba, the merchants of
Yemen. Is there anyone here Yemeni or of
Yemen origin?
Most people who are like old Hyderabad families,
you have some sort of Yemeni
either relative or or background.
Why? Because ark.
If
There's an entire arc. If you look from,
like, Tanzania
up through, Kenya,
Somalia, Eritrea,
and then that arc
sweeps through South India, and it sweeps through
all the way to the Indonesia,
Malaysia, the archipelago of the, of, the South
Southeast Asian archipelago, Indonesia and Malaysia which are
by now the most populous,
Muslim countries. What's the what's the country that
has the largest Muslim population? Anyone know? India.
Wrong. It's actually India.
That's a problem for some reason. We can
talk about that later. But the most populous
country that's officially a Muslim country is Indonesia.
Actually, India has more Muslims than than than
Indonesia does despite the fact that it's a
Muslim minority country.
But the, trick question, anything I say always
assume it's a trap. Always assume it's a
trap, and you will survive.
Feel lulled into a sense of comfort. That's
when I'm gonna get you. So the the
the the the that whole arc, what is
it? It's Yemeni traders. It's Yemeni traders that
went from, you know, literally there are people
who took their business with them, and they
say, I'm gonna do business. I am gonna
use it as a way of serving the
deen of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. Anyone
here from Seattle? Peanut butter masher. You know
Imam Jovan. Right? He's he's the oldest scholar
in the in the Seattle area.
He's the first one there. I don't know
anyone before him who actually had formal training.
He's a graduate of al Azhar al Sharif.
He used to give I remember, Quran Tafsir.
People used to come from like a 100
miles around in every direction to hear
it. Imam Jovan, did you know that when
Sheikh Qasim, who studied in Hadar Moth, came
back from, study in, I think, 2012 or
or 2,000
Right?
I took him to meet imam Jabaan. I
thought, okay. He's a new graduate. He should
meet all the imams in the area. Let's
let's have them meet each other. He told
me something I never knew before.
When Sheikh Hassan said, I graduated from from
the, Madrasah,
Darul Mustafa in in Hadaromot.
Imam Jubaan said, do you know my great
grandfather was from Tareem?
He said, my great grandfather was Tareem.
And what happened was there was a sayyid.
He was a sharif, a a descendant of
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam who's an
alim. And he named, I think, one of
the the famous
tribes of the Sadaat in Yemen, of the
Ahlulbayt of the prophet
in Yemen. He said, this this this sheikh
was a great and a great merchant. He
was a he was an alim. He used
to call people to Islam. He would figure
out where in the world people are Muslims,
and he just pick one place after the
other and keep hammering away at that that
place until the people become Muslims, and then
he would,
pick another place. He just said, the whole
thing he did in his life.
And so what happened, he said that that
this Idi Rus, he went
to some island somewhere in in in Indonesia.
And what he would do is once he
would manage to convert the entire, like, set
of villages in an area,
he would then take some young people the
intelligent young people from them, and he would
take a trip and go back to Yemen.
And then what would he do? He'd take
them back to Yemen, sign them up in
Madrasah.
Then he would go and take the, go
and visit all the other traders and all
the other merchants.
And he'd say, you know what? We we
gotta build masajid. These people are new Muslims.
We need to build We need to bring
build houses for the ulama. We need to
build like
a a a a a a for the
people to make zikr. We need to build
a library. All of these things. And what
would the merchants do? Right? Nowadays, what do
the rich people do in our locality?
They'll say, oh, okay. Bring me a PowerPoint
presentation.
Book a room at the,
Drury Lane,
or in the Monty, the Shalimar,
the Hilton,
Mariette.
Spend $30,000.
Hire a hire a comedian as if the
deen of Allah ta'ala is supposed to be
some sort of a joke or a laughing
matter.
Hire an entertainer.
So one time someone asked, are you to
so and so fundraiser?
I said, man,
that's expensive ticket. It's a $100 ticket. How
am I gonna go? He said, no. No.
So and so is gonna sing nasheed there.
I said, for a $100, forget about nasheed.
He better dance.
But unfortunately,
that's that's the way we do things. We
don't we don't wanna do it the old
way. You know, the way that was successful
that worked for our forefathers, we don't wanna
do it that way. What did he do?
He gathered all the people. He said, this
entire place, they all be accepted Islam.
People would be amazed. It's this is amazing.
This is wonderful.
So we need this in order to propagate
the Islam forward. And so he would raise
the money, then he would go to the
madrasa. You see these, Dar es Salaam kids
who are gonna graduate today? So bring me
bring me, like, you know, talk to the
mashaikh, bring me the the
the the trustworthy
ones amongst them. The sharp ones, the smart
ones, intelligent ones, who are ready to make
sacrifice for the sake of Allah ta'ala, who
are ready to,
do something with their life for the sake
of the deen. And he would gather them
together and say, come, we're going. You're never
gonna see your home again.
We're leaving.
Omar, are you ready?
Omar Mustafa, are you ready?
Where are you? Hazem.
No more PlayStation.
I don't know if you have it in
the 1st place. No
more. That's it. Ice cream. All that stuff
is done.
Alright. You're going to go where? You're going
to go to Indonesia. Not the really amazing
nowadays where everyone's a pious Muslim drinking coconut
juice. In those days, they used to be
cannibals. You know that?
Right? You'd wanna eat ice cream? Dude, they
wanna
eat
you. Okay? I'm not Hazem, raise your hand,
everybody. Right? I'm not I'm not, I'm not
a cannibal. I don't like eating people. But
if I did, Hazem would look really tasty.
He'd be probably the tastiest looking dude in
the entire,
in the entire Dar es salaam. There's some
other people I don't wanna embarrass them, call
them out. They I wouldn't wanna eat them.
But Hazem looks like he's a very tasty
guy. Okay? That's it. You're gonna you're gonna
do this. You ready? That's it. Your mama's
gonna say salaam to you. She's gonna see
you at the haud, man. That's it. Done.
Okay? So he would gather this money together
and gather these people together, and they would
go to that place. Then
he would supervise the masjid that's built, and
then he would stay with those people and
teach them, okay. This is their custom for
this, that, and the other thing. This is
the chief of the tribe. This is, you
know, the, you know, that, and the other
thing. This is the chief of the tribe.
This is, you know, the you know, don't,
you know, tell this person this thing. Otherwise,
he's gonna get upset. He set them all
up, get the madrasa running, get the local
children learning Quran, all of these things. And
then he would leave and go to the
next place and do the whole thing over
again. This is not just one person who
did it. This is literally
Khalaf and An Salaf people again and again
and again in every place they did this.
Not just the Hadramis. Hadramis are very proud.
I sat in a taxi cab one time
with the Hadrami.
Not this time. That guy was an interesting
guy too. Sometime before, you know, the in
in Hajj on the 10th of the hija,
all the roads are blocked. He says, don't
worry. I know
like the back of our hand.
He said that he said
that 2 things that we are we're proud
of. 1 is we're
is filled with our people, and the other
thing is that the world was filled with
our people. There's no place that our people
haven't gone and taken
to. It's a source of pride for them.
Makes them makes them happy with themselves. You
know, just like how some people now,
my son is a doctor, Even more than
that.
Right?
The people who believe, they have even more
fervent love for Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala than
the kuffar have for their, kafir material type
stuff.
So what happened? This is a project. It
doesn't require governments to support
you. It doesn't require armies to come to
you.
Right? Who is merchants and mystics? We talked
about merchants. Who are the mystics?
They're the people of dhikr. They're the people
who would go as a stranger.
The people who are loved and celebrated amongst
their people. They'll go amongst the people who
don't know who they are and don't know
who they are. People who know nothing about
Islam, nothing about iman, nothing about any deen
whatsoever.
They'll show up as a stranger and start
calling people toward Islam.
The name the name
Khaja is it's a it's a city by
Herat. Those are places that have been in
the fold of Islam since the time of
the Sahaba
Harat probably has the Mu'a Isn't that right?
The hiraat has the graves of Sahaba
So And he himself is a sayyid, he's
ahlulbaytah of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
In a time and age people used to
respect that
a lot.
He what he went in order to propagate
the deen to where to where Mufti ezaz
is kind of from. Right? Where is that
Ajmer? Right? You guys your last name Ajmeri.
Right?
Ajmeri is a place absolutely had nothing to
do with deen. Now we hear Ajmer and
we think, subhanallah, ta'ala salaam.
Right? We think about MSI.
There was a time people did used to
think about MSI when they heard the word
ajmer.
Complete kufr. I mean, not just like, you
know, one thing is there's churches and synagogues.
We're talking about idol worshipers. We're talking about
people who eat human feces, some of them.
We're talking about people who don't wear clothes.
We're talking about people who They have no
idea about who is Allah and who
Rasool Okay?
Tell me something. When Khaja Muinauddin Chishti came
to, Ajmer, was Ajmer under Muslim rule?
Absolutely not. The army came after he did.
Khajaqutbuddin
Bakhtiar Kaki,
his disciple,
right, who who who
was one of who during whose time Delhi
was conquered. Delhi became like the capital of
the Muslims. People now is New Delhi. Delhi
is a place where you get a roast
beef sandwich. Delhi is the the this the
this city was
a
Kufar were not allowed to live there. They
would come in the morning and leave at
Maghrib time. It was a city that had
literally 100 of oqaf, masajid, madaris, libraries,
public free hospitals, all of these things.
Who came first? First? Did the army come
or did the the the people who brought
the the deen with them first come?
The people who brought the deen, they all
came first. The armies come later.
This work is not the work of the
armies.
This work of putting
in the hearts of people happens only one
at a time. It's not the work of
military, it's not the work of armies.
Do you think, do you think
that you are going to be able to
come with the niya of taking from somebody,
and they're going to accept the dean from
you at the same time?
The fact of the matter is,
majority of us majority of us, we're either
immigrants or we're the children of immigrants.
We're either immigrants or we're the children of
Michelle, we've been suffering from pietitis, you know,
for the last 3, 4 days now, so
we forget, like, what, you know, what we
made in the past. Majority of us came
to this country to make money.
Someone might say, oh, man, I'm born and
raised here. I'm not here to make money.
I'm I'm born and raised here.
We still have a chip on our shoulder
against against the system, against the man.
They enslaved my forefathers. They did. It was
horrible.
It was inhuman. It was a holocaust. It
was worse than the holocaust.
The people who died in the holocaust, they
died. At least they know what their the
names of their fathers are. The people who
were brought here in chains as slaves to
this country,
they they they literally separated
a who the name of their father do
you know how difficult that must be? Still,
we see in our salaf, there's there's a
precedent for how to deal with the situation.
If you wanna be one of the dunya,
you can take the revenge of the dunya.
That's the law allows you that.
If you wanna be one of the, you
have to swallow all of that and and
and and and raise yourself to a higher
standard. You know, anyone here been to Lahore
before?
Anyone? Right? Right?
You've been to
to free, and things like that. Right? So,
The sheikh, he actually wrote a book. It's
called.
Nobody reads it.
They just go and, like, do weird stuff
at his grave. But the
book in in the book, it's one of
the earliest books that that's written on Tassauuf.
Right?
He himself was from Ghazni.
He's a Ghaznavi, which is again Central Asia.
And he left also for the same reason
that he wanted to also be like these
pious people and spread the deen of Allah
Ta'ala. You can read in his book how
he's like, you know what? It's really difficult
to be here. Like you can tell the
the difficulty of what he's doing is like
wearing on him. He has a slight amount
of annoyance that, you know, I've left the
the lands of Islam and now I'm in
I put myself in this difficult position.
But he still
he kept it real. He did his thing.
Allah reward him.
He
writes the story in the Tabakaat of the
of
1 Muhammad Khair and Nasaj.
Nasaj is like, Nasaj is the one who
does embroidery. Right? So his name is the
Sheikh, his name is Muhammad Khair. His name
is Mohammed. His father named him Mohammed. The
story that he had was that he was
from, I think, Kufa or Baghdad, and he
saved up money. Obviously, you know,
the zikr type people don't make a whole
lot of money usually. Some of them do,
but most of them don't. Right? So he
saved up his money for for for quite
some time, and he wanted to do what?
He wanted to go on Hajj. Right? He's
not going to Hawaii. He's not gonna, you
know, go skiing. He's gonna go on what?
On Hajj. That's a pretty pious thing. He's
already a pretty pious dude, and he's saved
up his money to do what? To go
on Hajj. Okay? On his way to Hajj,
he the caravan stops in Basra,
which is the other big city of Iraq.
And what happens,
the, there was a man who calls a
police officer and said, this is my runaway
slave. His name is Khayr.
And the police officer grabs him and shackles
him and they drag him by force to
this guy's house.
So the sheikh, he says that,
you know, I I didn't know what was
going on, but I figured, you know, I
made the intention. I'm on in the path
of Allah Ta'ala, going to the house of
Allah Ta'ala. So there's some khair in this.
I'm just gonna go with it. So he
said, I just served him quietly for 3
years,
until one day he himself had a breakdown
and said, you're such a pious person. You
know I was lying, but you never said
anything bad to me. You took such good
care of me. You showed so much love.
He said, he made Tawba. He repented from
his,
he repented from what he did, and he
let him go.
He let him go. Someone might say, well,
you know, Alabama and Mississippi sure as *
didn't let us go. Well,
yes, that's true. But at the same time,
also, it's not like anyone forced,
forced people in America to abolish slavery for
whatever reason, good or bad, it was something
that was done. Why? Because of the appeal
of the Haqqaniq by the force of arms.
But the the point is not that. The
point is not that. It's all of those
things are horrible. What this guy did was
horrible. What the they did in the south
was horrible. The the the point that I
wanna bring up is what? Is that for
the rest of his life when he would
ask when when when people would ask him
what his name is, he would say my
name is Khayr. And the people who would
who knew him from before said, why do
you tell people your name is Khayl? This
is like the fake name this guy gave
you,
based on
a a a a lie, based on a
false accusation that you were his run slave.
He said, you know, I I thought about
it also,
and
I preferred the I preferred the name that,
Allah gave me over the name that my
parents
Which is what? What does it mean? It
doesn't mean that the guy, what he did
was right.
Right. In the Sharia, we know it's very
patently what he did was haram, it was
wrong, it was a lie, it's a dulm,
all that other stuff.
But the idea is nothing in the heavens
and the earth happens except for because Allah
ta'ala wants it to happen.
And there's some good in it for you.
If somebody is driving home and their car
gets hit and totaled,
nobody wants that to happen. Allah protect everybody
from that happening. If it happens though, if
you're a person of iman, you should know
and you have inside your heart, there's some
good in it for you.
Now imagine now imagine, okay, if a pious
or righteous, you know,
uncle or Arab uncle
calls
a American person to Islam,
what effect is it going to have?
And if a pious and righteous person calls
somebody to Islam through
his, that person knows that that my forefathers
did zulman you. How much more impact is
it going to have on them?
Allah taught put every one of us in
the position that we're in for a reason.
The work that that was there that the
did and that our forefathers did in terms
of
spreading the deen of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
That work is not contingent on government. It's
not contingent on Masjid boards. It's not contingent
on and on on on foundation
in Villa
in Villa Park or MSI
or Dar es Salaam or any of these
wonderful institutions. We love all of these institutions.
Right? It's not contingent on them. If there's
just you and you have
inside of your heart, you can you can
literally go out the door and use use
it somehow to benefit somebody to benefit yourself
as well.
That's going going to be work. That's going
to be heart to heart. And it's gonna
have 2 things. Right? Merchants and mystics. One
thing is the first component it's gonna need
to have is what? You will have to
do something in order to benefit someone's dunya
so that they can listen to you and
or entrust you enough to listen to you
when you tell them that you're gonna benefit
there?
That's the merchant part. The mystic part is
what? It's an extremely difficult task.
Why? Because you and I, economically, you have
the underhand. In terms of government, we're not
running the government. We're underhand. We have the
under the lower hand. We have, socially. Right?
People are nice. The nicest
of the people when they see the Right?
People are nice.
The nicest of the people, when they see
us, they say, okay. Don't be racist against
this guy. Inside, they're saying that he's Muslim,
but I'm sure he's the one of the
good ones. Right? We have the deck stacked
against us. We have the underhand.
The only way and what are we trying
to do? We're not trying to be even
with people. We're trying to what? Give to
them. We're trying to be an upper hand
in order to give them something.
This the math doesn't work out. The only
way you're going to be able to do
that successfully is what? Is to tap into
a source of infinite power and infinite help,
which is Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
That's the mystic part. If you're not a
person
who your salat is not just you're praying
5 times a day, you know, go up,
go down like the merry ground. Right? If
your your salat is not something that you're
actually getting something meaningful out of with Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala.
If your recitation of the Quran, you're not
getting something meaningful out of it with Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
If you're,
fast fasting, you're not getting something meaningful out
of it with Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. If
you don't hear the reminder and the remembrance
of Allah and his Rasool
and doesn't bring a tear to your eye,
you're not tapped into it yet.
You have to start with step 1 is
you have to tap into it first.
It's not easy. It's itself a difficult thing.
It involves giving up haram. It involves,
you know, praying your your you know, doing
your your, discharging your obligations properly and then
doing more and more and more until your
heart the rock breaks and the living part
of your heart emerges from underneath it.
If you cannot tap into that, all of
this is like a pipe dream. It's like
you're in 3rd grade and someone's telling you
about calculus. Drop out of that conversation,
maybe you can keep it as a goal
for like a long term goal. Go to
those people and go to those places that
will help you do what? That will teach
you the dhikr of Allah Ta'ala, teach you
the name of Allah Ta'ala so that when
you say it, it affects you and it
affects other people.
And then once you're there, you have to
keep that up. You have to constantly tap
into that source of power. It's the only
thing other people will die from depression.
Other people will die from anxiety. Other people
will die from frustration.
Is because they're afraid, oh my god, like,
the white people are gonna
inside their heart they're not gonna pray is
because they're afraid, oh my god, like, the
white people are gonna look at me.
Which is fine. It's an anxiety people have.
If you cannot get over it, then you
the other stuff is, you know, you probably
shouldn't be running from president at that point,
and you probably shouldn't be giving Jummah Khotbah.
You should work on yourself a little bit.
Right? This anxiety, the only way you're going
to get over it, the only way you're
gonna get over this economic,
handicap
and this social
handicap, this political handicap. The only way you're
gonna get over these things is what? Is
that you
have this connection with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
He's the one that he what? When the
Sahaba radiallahu an whom entered the
the the of Kisra of the Persian emperor,
they said these are like lizard eating people.
They smell like camels. They came out of
the desert. Who the * are they to
tell me that, you know, what religion I
should follow and I'm the king of kings
and all this other stuff? And what happened?
Allah ta'a trampled their entire mulk under the
feet of the sahaba radiAllahu ta'ala anhu. Why
is that? Because they tapped into that source
of
is bearing down on on on that thing,
all it's gonna do is gonna make it
even more spectacular when the sea swallows them
up.
If Kufr could have ended the din,
don't you think there were centuries
centuries of plots and schemes
not starting from Abu Jahl and Abu Lahab.
Right? Starting from
the, from ad and famud. Don't you think
there are plots
centuries of plots and schemes to end this
thing?
People would've The nations of the earth would've
loved to get together and ended this thing.
But the thing is they can't fight with
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And if you're with
Allah subhanahu they can't fight with you. Allah
give us.
We have to enter into our hearts,
and sincerity for Allah and for Rasool salallahu
alayhi wasalam for the Sahaba radiAllahu and whom
to carry on their work, sincerity for our
neighbors that we can't resent them, we can't
call them names,
Even the dude with the Trump sign in
his lawn, you know, you have to have
say what? I hope Allah gives this person
something better.
You can't you can't yeah. The first thing
is you have to yourself, if you want
them to fail, then how is Allah gonna
help you make give them hidayah? It's just
your duas while your heart is making duas
constantly for this person to go to jahannam.
Right? You have to want this for self,
your children. You have to want this for
them as well. Right? If you'd want if
your children are themselves going astray and they'd
never learned to read the Quran and they
never sat for the dhikr of Allah ta'ala
and you never woke them up to because
they have to go to school because there's
a pep rally for the football game in
the morning or whatever, then how are you
gonna want it for someone else if you
don't want it for the ones you love?
You have to have this for everybody. It's
a really big burden to carry. You have
to strengthen yourself in order to carry that
burden through what? Through the dhikr of Allah
are wonderful
and pious people like Moana Tamim and others
like him inshallah. You can talk to them
about that. They'll help you with that inshallah.
Allah
give all of us so
much. I would go on, but,
is kind of he scares me.