Hamzah Wald Maqbul – Real & Fake Identity & Islm
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the importance of identity and how it is based on principles rather than values. They address issues such as race and how it affects one's life and reputation, as well as the importance of acknowledging and respecting family members' privacy. They stress the need for an investigation and a court case to address unfair behavior, and stress the importance of identifying oneself by one's tags and language. They also discuss the consequences of racism and how it leads to problems.
AI: Summary ©
All praises to Allah and may his peace
and blessings be upon his servant and messenger,
our master, Sayidina Muhammad Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam. May the peace and blessings of
Allah Ta'ala be upon his noble companions and
upon his pure wives and upon his and
blessed family and progeny and upon all of
those who follow their way until the day
of judgment.
I'll do everybody a favor by standing while
talking. This This will limit the amount of
time
I talk.
And that's good for all of us.
I was asked to talk about identity.
And identity itself is a very loaded term.
It's a very loaded term, especially the time
and place we live in. We live in
a culture that's saturated by identity politics.
Okay? What happens is if you have a
panel of people sitting in front of any
group of other people,
instantly people will look. They'll see how many
people are black, how many people are white,
how many people are male, how many people
are female, what's their orientation, what's their political
party, what's this, what's that. I got this
many minutes of airtime. I got that many
minutes of airtime. All of these different things,
everything will be broken down
and viewed through the lens of this kind
of identity
politics.
And how people
define themselves within the framework of these identity
politics
is often quite arbitrary.
It's often what? It's quite arbitrary.
And I don't want to delve into this
too much because the discussion will remain very
abstract,
and and we will not get to any,
concrete part of the discussion.
Although that's important as well. It's important to
understand the question before
answering it. If you answer a question without
understanding it, you gain nothing. If you understand
the question, then at least at a later
time, you'll be in a position to understand
the answer properly.
But
we have a an intellectual tradition which is
Usuli. It's principled. It's based on principles.
Okay?
The idea of a principled
tradition
or the idea of a tradition that's built
on principles is something that is
gone out of fashion
in in in kind of Western academia and
Western intellectual discourse.
And I don't even say Western anymore. This
is
global academia, global intellectual discourse. Why? Because the
idea is what? You have your principles. I
have my principles. Your principles are
good for you. My principles are good for
me, which is actually
the opposite of what the definition of a
principle is. A principle is something that is
right under all circumstances.
It's universally right. It's universally correct. But it's
out of fashion to claim something as universally
correct anymore.
It's out of fashion to claim something as
universally correct anymore. Well, the problem is this,
is that Islam is what? It's a tradition
that's a tradition of revelation. It's a revealed
tradition. And what's the source of the revelation?
The source of the revelation is Allah Subhanahu
wa ta'ala. Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala, God who
created the heavens and the earth from nothing.
Allah ta'ala who's right over everyone and everything
is absolute.
And so we do believe in absolute truth
and we do believe in principle.
And we have a book that we believe
that is the revelation of God. Everything that's
in it is truth,
and
everything that
it qualifies
as good is good, and everything that it
qualifies as bad is bad. Everything that it
qualifies as evil is evil. And that's why
we have an ability to have an intellectual
tradition which is based on principle.
Whereas if you want to have people that
have different,
foundations for their,
for their way of dealing with intellectual issues
and all come together and have a common
platform that they're gonna discuss,
discuss things on, that's not possible anymore because
people will bring their own different traditions. So
Islam has this issue. It has this issue
that people have, I guess, latched onto
or or or zeroed in on. That, wow,
these Muslims, there's something wrong with them. They're
not gonna agree with us ever about anything.
And the Quran Quran says that. It's very
plain. The the yahud and nasa will not
be happy with you and tell you follow
their millah. Why? Because our principles are different
than their principles.
And our sacred law and our prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam teach us that if you
come in contact with somebody
who has
principles other than yours or no principles at
all or at any rate doesn't accept your
principles as correct,
You deal with them based on whatever common
common understanding you have regarding worldly regarding worldly
matters. And you'd be good to them in
this world. That you'd be good to them
in this world. There's no necessity to knock
heads with everybody.
Right? But we say what? That there's a
path that's called belief and it's heading in
one direction, and there's a path called disbelief
and it's heading in a different direction. And
after we all die and go into our
graves, there's no longer any reconciliation. Why? Because
we believe one set of principles
is correct and the other is not correct.
Or in the case of someone who has
no principles,
it's logically impossible for a person that has
no principles to get to a point where
something is completely correct. So moving one step
in the direction from the abstract to practical,
what am I talking about? So identity in
America.
Perhaps the most high profile
issue regarding identity in America is what? It's
race.
Right? It's race. Black and white. Okay? What
does black mean?
What does white mean? Okay? According to according
to the kind of,
pseudoscience
or pseudo
theory of race, okay,
myself, I'm a white person.
Okay? A Sudanese person whose skin color is
as dark as that of an African American,
he's going to be considered what? To be
a white person. Why? Because he's an Arab,
and Arabs are
Arabs are what? Arabs are considered white people
in that in that in that, in that
kind of racial hierarchy or racial
dichotomy in that tree. Right? It seems a
little bit awkward. But what?
We're we're we're white people. Technically, when we're
going to check the circle and the demographic
study, we're not Asians because when they say
Asian, right, they mean what? When I say
we, I mean people like myself, not everybody
here. Right? But a person like myself who's
going to serve like Asian, what do they
mean? They mean people from? From from from
they mean when they say Asian, they don't
say, we mean Middle Easterners. They mean people
from China and people
from, Thailand and people from from Japan and
people from what the what they call the
Far East of Asia. And I find even
this term Far East to be problematic because
it's far compared to what? If you're in
China, and China's not very far away, is
it? Right? So,
you know, you have you have these kind
of weird inconsistencies
that are there. And
at the same time, right, if you have
somebody, a person may be phenotypically
black.
Right? But if his father is a white
man, is he still black? What does any
of this mean? And honestly, I find the
concept of race in America to be,
like, just a pseudo concept. It has no
real root. Why it's not based on any
principle? It's just like, well, this guy's obviously
black and this guy's obviously white. The failure
of of of being able to define something
is a a a typical trait of
having a non principled approach toward a problem,
toward an issue. So when we say Barack
Obama is the 1st black president of the
United States, well, his mother is, according to
the, you know,
whatever definition that the land gives, his mother
is a white woman. So why is he
more black than he is white? But because
there's no consistency in any of these definitions,
we've made something black and made something called
white. And there's, like, a nebulous of an
idea of what they mean, but there's not
really any definition there. Why? Because it doesn't
return to any principles.
I had, for example, a friend in high
school.
Believe me, he had
his skin color was white to the point
of being pale and clammy.
His hair was red. His hair was red.
He looked like he just immigrated from Ireland,
perhaps.
Okay? He said to me, he showed me
a picture of his mother. Right? His picture
of his mother. His mother was a,
somebody that a person would say right away,
this is a African American. Let's say it
right away. But what this whole system doesn't
it doesn't, you know, jive up well. So
he says, I oftentimes am stuck in very
awkward positions where I'll be sitting with other,
you know, other, quote unquote, white people who
identify as white,
and they'll say very overtly racist things because
they know there's no other black person around.
And they'll all laugh. He says, I have
to laugh with them sometimes because it becomes
socially awkward if I if I tell them
if I tell them, well, actually, this is
a picture of my mother. Right? You can't
do that every day of your life. You
understand what I'm saying? The idea is it
becomes ridiculous at some point.
Islam has the idea not of race. It
has an idea of lineage.
Right? You won't find in the in the
5th books the discussion of black people this,
white people that. It has the idea of
lineage. Right? A person follows the lineage of
lineage of their father, the tribal lineage of
their father, a person, you know, follows the
the the the lineage of his mother, etcetera,
etcetera. There are all these different,
all these different, legal rulings that have to
do with
with what your lineage is. But even at
the end of it even at the end
of it, Islam negates this. This is not
a,
an identity that's relevant to you. It's a
real identity. Right? Because although you cannot define
what a black person is and what a
white person is, you can't define whose mother
somebody is and whose father they are. That's
a very objective
criterion by which you can define identity. Right?
Even then, right, it's recorded on the day
of the Fatah of Mecca. The Nabi alaihis
salatu waslam ordered Sayna who was an Abyssinian
an Abyssinian freed slave to climb to the
top of top of the Kaaba,
the most holy place,
that that was known to the Arabs. Right?
To climb to the roof of the Kaaba
and to give the adhan, to the call
to
prayer. And so the prophet
passed by 3
chieftains of of Quresh.
Right? One of them had just accepted Islam,
and the other 2 had not had had
not yet accepted Islam. So one of them,
he made a racist comment. He says, who
is this? Who is this black crow who
has come to the climbed to the top
of the,
Kaaba. And and and he he he insulted
said that
by saying this. He wanted to insult him
at least. Right? And then the second person
said what? I'm happy that my father is
in his grave so he didn't have to
live to see the the day that what?
The day that that that a black slave
stands on top of the Kaaba.
And the third one is Abu Sufyan, who
had recently accepted Islam, and he stayed quiet.
He didn't say anything.
The Nabi alaihis salam overheard this
this this, these comments by these people,
and then he addressed the he addressed the
phone. He addressed the the gathering of people
around the Kaaba.
And he said what? He said,
He read the ayah of the Quran.
Oh, people of mankind.
We created you from 1 male and 1
female, and we made you tribes and nations
so that you may know one another. You
may know one another meaning what? That there's
some good in a person's lineage, and that
good is is that you have your family,
and you know who your family is. You
know who your relatives are. We are people
who are commanded to honor our relatives and
honor our kinship bonds. We're not people who
walk around in school. Right? Oh, I hit
my dad. I hit my mom. We're not
supposed to we're not we're not people who
do that. Right? Even it may be, like,
a little bit true at times, but you're
supposed to suppress that. You're not supposed to
say it. You're supposed to say it. And
it's it's healthy. Don't say it. Suppress it.
Remember when your parents upset you, the good
things that they've done for you. There's so
many of them. Right? Your brothers and sisters,
you're not supposed to cut them off. Your
cousins, you're not supposed to cut them off.
Even if someone does something bad to you,
if you have the opportunity to repay that
person, you don't repay them in badness, but
you repay them in kindness. And that's how
you get the upper hand over them. Right?
This is the idea in in in our
deen.
So we created you tribes and nations so
you may know each other. Meaning what? So
that you can recognize who your your kinship
affiliations are with so that you can honor
them, you can take care of those people.
The idea is that if every family took
care of their own relatives,
there would be no need for a welfare
state.
One thing is the idea, like, okay, fine.
You know, like, most of us voted for
Bernie Sanders. Right? Let's be honest. I'm not
endorsing the candidate. I'm just saying statistically, that's
probably the case. Okay? He's a Jewish candidate,
and all the Muslims are voting for him.
And that that smack in the face of
people who say that Muslims are a problem
with Jews. Right? But what
better than Bernie Sanders is what? Right? Better
than a socialist system where health care is
free and where education is free and housing
is you get help with and all these
things, is what? If every family took care
of the people that needed help in their
family, then you would have no need for
a state anymore.
You'd have no need for a state anymore.
The state would have a much smaller budget.
It wouldn't have to be taking your ID
all the time and your thumbprints and your
eye prints and, you know,
getting into up into your business and whatever.
It wouldn't need because what? There's less need
for what the state has to offer. Right?
We created you from tribes and nations so
that you may know each other.
The most honored amongst you is the one
who has the most consciousness of Allah, the
one who is the most God conscious and
God fearing. And verily Allah
has all knowledge
and is all informed.
And then afterward he said what?
He said,
That Allah has driven away from you, has
unloaded from you the burden of the burden
of ignorance.
And what is he referring to? He's referring
to the
vainglorious
boasting about who your forefathers are. Right? So
we said, well, we don't even have a
concept of race in the 1st place because
the concept of race I challenged somebody to
actually give me some sort of cogent definition
or principle definition
of what race even is. Right? What did
he say to the Allah even he he
he unloaded, unburdened you from the burden of
of the days of ignorance
That you should boast in front of one
another about my forefathers are this, my forefathers
are that. Right? That that that your lineage,
you should think you're better or worse than
somebody because of your lineage. He got rid
of that for you.
And the only thing that's left after that
is what?
A pious person who believes.
Right?
Meaning a God fearing person who believes,
or or you're a profligate. You're a person
who doesn't render the rights to other people,
and you're a person who's who's wretched.
Wretched, one might say, well, somebody who steals
money and is very wealthy because of his
dishonest
business practices. How is that person wretched? They
seem to be driving Teslas and getting jobs
at Goldman Sachs and
flying around in private airplanes where I have
to fly out or flying, you know, on
Spirit Airlines and pay, like, $15
for checking a bag or whatever. You know,
how is that wretched? The one who's wretched
is not the one who's wretched for the
2 or 3 days that we're alive in
this in this world. The one who's wretched
is the one who's wretched forever in the
fire. May Allah be our protection from it.
Right? So you're either what? A
pious believer
or you are a profligate, a person who
doesn't care about rendering the rights of people
when those rights are due, and you're a
wretched person. Again, not the wretchedness of this
world, but the wretchedness that lasts forever for
a person who
dies in a, in such a state.
And
you wanna know what your lineage is? You
wanna know what your lineage is? Is what?
You're all of your your lineages from Adam.
It's from the same father, alayhis salam. Abu
al Bashir alayhis salam. All of you are
from Adam. All of you are from the
same lineage. And Adam, his lineage is traced
to what? To dust.
Right? To dust, to the earth. So if
you wanna
boast about something, you can boast about that.
There's a very
beautiful versification
of poetry,
a
piece of a small
idea of the difference between knowledge and the
difference between ignorance. And one of the lines
of it one of the lines, I don't
remember the Nazem right now. I can fish
it out of
the phone for you if you're, people who
appreciate
Arabic literature.
But,
one of one of the lines of it
is that if you want to boast about
any lineage, right, if you want to boast
about any lineage, then boast about your lineage,
which is what? You're the son of dirt
and you're the son of water.
You're the daughter of dirt, and you're the
daughter of water.
This is what? This is the prophet
doing something that what we call in modern
and and modern philosophies.
Deconstructing. He's deconstructing
the the the identity of lineage, and he
does a really good job of it. I
mean, he deconstructing,
you know,
deconstructing is, you know, for those of you
who are in middle school and high school,
right, when someone says deconstruction or deconstruct
is like the the the the intellectual equivalent
of, like, WWF body signing someone against the
the he he completely deconstructs the idea of
of of of of lineage being an identity
that's that's worthy of identifying with. It's completely
white. Because if you really want to identify
with it, take it to its natural end,
which is what? That you're made from the
same Earth, part of the Earth that another
person is made of. And if you want
to see that Earth in its raw and
unrefined form, it's dirt. Right? So this is
this is what this is talking about identity,
that Islam doesn't
pull people toward identities that are irrelevant.
A person may have any number of different
identities that they have, almost all of which
are irrelevant.
The amount of money that you have.
Right? Out of wealth, money is the use
most useless form of form of wealth.
Say, oh my god. What are you talking
about? Do you need money? No.
Can you drink money? No. Can you live
inside of money? No. Can you, fall in
love with money? Yes. But it's a psychological
problem. You're a psycho if you do. Alright?
Can you can you,
you know, can you can you does money
clean anything for you? Does money what is
what is it? It's actually they literally call
it a fiat currency.
It's actually a bogus it's like not it
it really is nothing. Right? There used to
be a time when my father, when he
immigrated to America in this early seventies,
said there's a time there's another line on
the money that we don't have right now,
which is that you the bearer of this
note can go to the treasury and exchange
it for its equivalent in gold. And that
line isn't there anymore. It's one of the
many wonderful gifts we,
got from the late president Richard Milhouse Nixon.
Right? The money is not literally, it's not
worth it's not anything anymore. Right?
These things that these are the first things
that we ask about. These are some of
some people
a person, even if they want to ask
about it, they should have a little bit
of shame, you know? A little bit of
shyness there. How much money does so and
so make? How much money was this car?
How much money was this house? What does
it matter to you? I could I could
someone could buy this bottle of water from
me for $10,000. Does it change what the
bottle of water is?
We're talking about identity of not you know,
you and you. Identity
issues for what? For a bottle of water.
If somebody right now paid a paid $10,000
for this bottle of water, does it change
what the bottle of water is?
Absolutely not. It's the same bottle of water
that another person is gonna go buy for,
like, 45¢ somewhere. And you constantly put a
quarter in the machine and you get the
it's exactly the same it's the same bottle
of water.
All of these things. Right? But we we
they're so important to us. But that's what
is is ignorance. Money,
nationality,
right? So many people, they
have the blue passport and they travel
amongst the nations of the world. And they
think that this makes them different or somehow
better than another person.
And
even the funnier thing is there are people
who are very recent immigrants. And they'll look
at the blue passport, and they'll say to
someone else who has the same passport that
this person had like, 6 months ago. And
they'll look down on them. They'll say, oh,
does it make a difference
who you are based on what passport you
have, what citizenship you have? Absolutely ridiculous. Absolutely,
but we do it anyway. Right? What are
what are what are useless,
what are useless
types of identity? Right? Useless types of identity.
Right? Somebody graduated from such and such school,
and they have a degree.
Right? So, oh, are you anti education? No.
Right?
What's the value? The value is it in
the education, or is it in the degree?
Education. Supposedly, it's in the education.
But what? We act like it's in the
degree.
Right? So there are people I read the
PhD thesis of somebody who got a PhD
from Harvard. Right? And I found in the
first, like, 5 paragraphs, like, several very bad
spelling mistakes.
What does that mean?
What does that mean, PhD from Harvard? If
a person is just as intelligent there are
many people there are many people who are
just as intelligent. Albert Einstein, he was by
I mean, people may say whatever they want
to about him, but no one's going to
say that he was a poor physicist. Right?
But he had, like, a job as a
clerk in a in a government office. He
was not able to,
secure in the early part of his life
a position that one would think that a
physicist of that caliber is able to secure.
Why? Because all of these things, these are
all
irrelevant irrelevant
indicators of identity. And the messenger of Allah
was once
asked about,
these type of these type of different, like,
identities that a person can take, and he
gave a very, beautiful and subtle answer to
a questioner who was not getting the point.
Right? The point wasn't
getting across to him. So someone once asked
the messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam,
said, who is the most honorable of you?
Right?
Who's the most noble and honorable of people?
Basically, what it was was somebody got into
an argument with somebody else from a different
tribe,
and he said, my tribe is better than
your tribe.
So now they're going to who? The one
who receives wahi.
Right? The one who receives revelation from above
the 7 heavens and from above the magnificent
throne, from the one who is eternal and
uncreated,
the one who created everything from nothing,
as if this is, like, a matter that's
important for him to settle
settle a dispute between 2 people from,
2 tribes that from from all indications, from
a person who's, like, in a different time
and place, we couldn't even tell the difference
between the 2 of them. Right? This is
not what this is not what Nabuwa is
for. This is not what the function of
the office of
of of prophethood is, to settle people's weird,
like, racist arguments. But the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam was sent to what?
I was sent to do not, but to,
perfect good character. So see, how silly is
the question and how beautiful is the way
the prophet
answers it. Right?
So he asked he asked who is the
most noble of people? Meaning what? Which tribe?
The subtext of the question is which tribe
is better. Right? Who's the most noble of
people? The Messenger
of
Allah
said,
that the best of you is the one
who fears God the most. So the question
is like, no, no, no. That's not what
I'm asking. Allah's stuff is great. Right? The
prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam gave an
answer. He gave an answer based on principle,
an answer that's objective,
an answer that that you can actually measure
something based on, an answer,
regarding something that it is clear to a
person
why it's beneficial. Because taqwa leads a person
to what? A good end. It makes a
person happy. Maybe not happy in this world,
but a person will be happy forever in
paradise. It comes in the hadith of the
Messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
that the person who is in paradise
who had the worst life in this world,
like, that a person can imagine.
Right? And there are people who have some
people, they lost their entire family, they lost
everybody that they love, they have loose limbs,
they they suffer through painful illness, they
suffer through psychological
trauma, physical trauma, all sorts of things. We
have a lot of blessings to count. We
have a lot of blessings to count. And,
you know, we cannot imagine
how bad such a person must have gone
through an experience.
But once they enter into the nirma of
Allah, God's blessing, that person will be brought
forward after the judgment is over and said,
did you ever go through any difficulty,
in your life? He said he'll say no,
by a lie, I never saw a day
of difficulty in my life. Why? Because
the the the
the hereafter is better than this world and
it lasts forever.
Right? It's just something that doesn't require PhD
in mathematics to know that the thing that's
finite,
right, is less than the thing that's infinity.
Right? Then on the flip
side, the person who had the most amount
of, the most amount of blessings in this
world, worldly blessings, who will enter into the
fire,
That person will be brought forward.
And, you know, to,
you know, be be be real about this
and some people are really enjoying themselves.
I mean, we're we're enjoying ourselves as well,
but, like, there's
some people who are really enjoying themselves. I
was once,
in line,
right, to,
go through the TSA checkpoint.
So I fly so much that I'm platinum
on on an airline. So there's a separate
line we stand in that's shorter
than the than the than the line that
that the people who either travel casually or
once in a while stand in. And so
there are 2 businessmen behind me. They're having
a talk with chat with one another. One
of them says, you see that door over
there? And the other guy says, yeah. He
goes, that door is for the people who
have a certain status that's not even advertised,
like your gold, platinum, executive plan. There's a
status that's not even advertised above that. He
says that that's, I fly 10 first class
trips to Europe in a year,
from with with my corporation, and I haven't
even hit that status yet. You have to
buy 400,000
1st class ticket to Europe is, bare minimum,
gonna be 12, $15,000.
Right?
It says that that that you have to
buy $400,000
of,
prepaid travel
in order to achieve that status, and there's
a separate door from the back that they
basically just take you to the plane. Right?
So he's like, yeah. That's it would be
pretty sweet. So these guys are talking about
it. Right?
10 first class tickets to Europe, and they're
jealous of whoever has this other status. Right?
That other status isn't even what a rich
person is. Rich people have their own private
jets, and they're there's, like, a lot of
stuff we don't think about. Right? Someone's like,
oh, $1,000,000. Oh, $1,000,000. That's a lot of
money. It's not a lot of money. It
really isn't a lot of money. $1,000,000. That's
a lot of it's not a lot of
money.
It really isn't a lot of money. $1,000,000
is like the dreams of, like, middle class
people, what they think is rich. Right? Okay.
You talk like several 1,000,000,000 like you're talking
now in the the order of magnitude of
sovereign wealth, then we'll say, okay. This is
like actual money. Right?
So there are people who are enjoying themselves
in ways I gave the example of, like,
the airport. Alright? There's obviously certain examples regarding
how people are enjoying themselves that are so
obscene that in a place of worship, they're
not really worthy of being mentioned, are they?
Right? The fact is that there are people
enjoying themselves quite a bit.
The the person who enjoyed himself the most
from the inmates of the hellfire,
that person will be brought forth and be
asked, did you ever have a good day
in your life? And when they taste that
that that,
that punishment. Right? They'll say, oh my lord.
I never had I never had a good
day in my existence. It'll kill. It'll be
nothing. It'll be a drop in in in
comparison.
Right? So what did the prophet
say?
The
most noble of you is the the one
who is most god fearing. Why? Because it's
a it's
it's it's something that you can measure.
It's something that you earn by your own
actions rather than being born into,
and it's something that it is immediately
apparent to
a
a a person who
understands something about the cosmology of the universe
why Taqwa is a good thing, because it
leads to a good end.
So this this question is, no, no, no,
no. That's not what we're talking about. You
know?
We're not talking talking about that. Tell us
who's the most noble of people. Right? Because
he still wants to hear the name of
a tribe.
Right? So what happens is the messenger of
Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam says then, the
most noble people of Sayna is Sayna Yusuf
al Islam.
This is Joseph, peace and blessings of God
be upon him. Because he's a noble brother,
the son of a a a a a
he's a he's a I'm sorry. A prophet.
The son of a prophet. Right? The son
of a prophet. The son of a prophet
who's
Joseph, the son of Jacob, the son of,
Isaac, the son of Ibrahim
Right? That he's he's he's he's a prophet,
and his father is a prophet, his grandfather
is a prophet, and his great grandfather is
a prophet.
And so this person is like, no. That's
not what I was asking about because that's
like. That's like we're having a little inter
Arab like racist tribal spat, and you're telling
us about somebody who's not in Arab in
the first place. We don't we don't care
about that. Right? And the prophet, salallahu alaihi
wa sallam, look at the beauty of his
style of answering the question is that he
purposely
he purposely gave them an answer that also,
again, will kinda completely mess with the framework
through which they're,
asking the question. Right? Deconstruct what, you know,
what the whole concept behind what their question
was. And so then the messenger of Allah
sallallahu alaihi wasallam, they asked him again, no,
no, that's not what we mean.
Tell us who's the most noble of people.
And he says, you're talking about you're talking
about the different alloys of the the Arabs.
The word alloy used metaphorically to mean the
the different lineages of the Arabs. Is that
what you're talking about? They said, yes, you
Rasool Allah. He said, then know that the
best of you, the people who were the
best of you before Islam will be the
best of you in Islam as long as
you bother to understand their religion.
So whoever it is or whoever it is,
and he didn't answer this. Whoever was good
before, they'll still stay good. The habits of
being good at something, you don't lose them
by saying,
Rather, you have an opportunity to put them
to good use. So he's not negating the
fact that some people may have a higher
status than others. This is one of the
things, like, culturally speaking, we're very accustomed to,
you know, accepting that everybody is equal. It's
an American value that everybody is equal. The
meaning of everybody
being equal is a good meaning. But the
meaning is what? That we're equal in the
eyes of the law. We should all be
treated equally in the eyes of the law,
and this is a a concept that even
Islam
upholds.
But it's not an absolute pronouncement because it
should be apparent to a person that a
person who is, you know, horrible in his
character,
horrible with his family,
or her family, a person who is a
liar, a cheater, dishonest person, how can you
say that that person is equal with
a person who's the opposite of all of
those things? Right? Rather, we suspend the judgment
of who's who, because it doesn't belong to
us. It's
because it doesn't belong to us. It belongs
to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. It belongs to
God. Allah
himself says,
See how we preferred some of you over
others. There are certain people amongst you that
that are
average and certain people excel in certain things.
Look how we favored some of you over
others. Right?
The courts and the law cannot favor one
person over the other. But Allah, subhanahu wa
ta'ala, who created the heavens and the earth
from nothing, has the right to favor whoever
he wishes.
And we don't have the right to ask
him about that. Because such and such thing
happened in the world. It's so unfair. What
do you mean it's unfair? Right? What if
I purchased, like, 2 water bottles from the
masjid? And so one of them, I I
I I I put it in a nice,
like, glass case in a museum,
and there's, like, a spotlight on it. And
I wash it and I polish it and
just put it right there. And the other
one, I go outside and go
smash it in the ground and all the
water is spilled and and wasted. And then
I pick up the bottle and put it
under my crumble it under my feet and
throw it in the garbage can. Right? Are
you gonna be able to call the police
and say, oh, he did something unfair and
it's a crime. We should we gotta I
have an investigation, a court case. If you
even try it, the cops are gonna threaten
you. They say this is a waste of
our time. Don't waste our time like this
again. And if you do, we're going to
put you in jail, and we're going to
put consequences and fines and whatnot on you
because this is a waste of our time.
Now if you can understand how
I can own 2 bottles of water, and
I have the right to do with those
2 bottles of water
what I please, then why can you not
understand is whose ownership is more complete? My
ownership over 2 waters bottles of water. I
neither made the bottle nor did I make
the water.
Or the one who created everything
from nothing, literally.
Right? The fact that he's nice to us
is
his decision for which we're very thankful.
Right? That's what when we say,
this is the grace of Allah gives to
whoever He wills. The idea of Allah's and
His grace is what? His grace is a
gift that He gives, which is such an
overwhelming gift that we at the same time
have to be cognizant that we neither deserved
it. We neither did anything to deserve it
nor will we ever be
able to do anything to repay it.
Nor will we ever be able to do
anything to repay. So he he he prefers
certain people over others, and he reserves the
right to judge himself. We don't have the
right to make that judgment. But we do
know that, a, there's a difference between people
in terms of their absolute value and their
absolute worth.
You'll see in the hereafter
You'll see
in the hereafter that the gradation and the
pronouncement of what the differences are between the
people of different ranks, it will be even
more clear. It will be even more apparent
to people.
So coming back to what? Coming back to
the idea of then what is our identity
as Muslims? Okay? Our identity is an identity.
It has to do with certain virtues that
people have. And those virtues are enumerated in
the Quran and the sunnah, and they are
parsed out and explained by the by
the explained by the by
the scholars. And we mentioned the reading of
a book called.
And Imam
is a very interesting person in our intellectual
basically just wrote books.
He wrote books. He wrote books that that
that are indispensable to our intellectual tradition.
And he wrote,
so many books that a person, if they
read that many books, much as rewrite them,
if they read that many books, we would
consider that person to be a scholar. So
he wrote 2 books that are meant to
be companions for
for the the public, the the lay public,
not not for the the scholars. 1 is
the
and 1 is the
is a book of
what a person should do
outwardly in their day. How they should pray,
how they should fast, how they should perform
different ritual
commandments,
ritual performances in their day. And then the
second book he wrote, which is the,
describes the virtues of a person's heart that
make that person. Right? Because what is the
heart? And when we talk about the heart
and the deen, right?
That the day of judgment is described as
a a day that that will not,
that a person will not be
benefited neither by their wealth nor by their
progeny.
That day, the only thing that that will
benefit a person is a is a rectified
heart. Does that mean we should all go
jogging?
Does that mean that the person who lifts
weight and goes to the gym every day,
person who is gonna be the most pious?
No.
We should go jogging and be fit and
all of that other stuff, but for other
reasons. When we say heart in this case,
right, a person has a spiritual apparatus,
right, which is referred to as the. Right?
A person has spiritual apparatus
and the who they are as a person,
is it melding of their physical
body and of the spiritual apparatus? A part
of that spiritual apparatus is the qalam, right,
which translates as heart.
And it physically resides in the same place
that your physical heart resides. But your physical
heart does what? It pumps blood through the
body.
Your spiritual heart does what? It's a center
of intentions. It drives whatever your intentions are
of what you do in the day. Right?
And then it will send a signal to
what? To your mind. Not to your brain.
The The brain is a physical apparatus.
The mind is a spiritual apparatus.
It will send a signal to your mind,
which will then use the processing power of
your brain in order to tell your body
to do all these different things. But the
the the origin of the order is where?
It's the heart the day of judgment is
the day that a person will not be
benefited by,
benefited by what? But benefited by wealth nor
by their offspring, their
rectified, a clear and pure heart.
The heart that pushes a person and that
that motivates a person and that makes intentions
in a pure way, in a play way
that's pleasing to Allah
Okay?
What are those what are those, sifaat? What
are those attributes of a pure heart? Those
are the things that we identify
with. That a person should be a person
that's God fearing. That a person should be
a person that's humble. That a person should
be a person that that is,
that has trust in Allah
That a person should be a person that
is, that that prefers others over themselves. Right?
There are a number of these different virtues.
Right? And some of those things are not
even some of those virtues, they're they're not
even
known or talked about in the civilization or
the the culture that we live in. Right?
There are 2 virtues of the heart. We
don't even have a word for them in
English.
One is haya and the other is hira.
There's not even a word for either of
these two words.
And what's the consequence?
Nobody has any haya. Nobody has any hira.
I can't go through the definitions of what
all of these things are, but you have
to learn about them, what these things are.
You have to decorate and you have to
beautify your heart,
just like a person works out and becomes
heart healthy real by, you know, whatever jogging
3 miles a day and eating egg whites
or god knows what. Right? Just like you
strengthen your physical heart like that, you have
to strengthen your
your,
your your spiritual heart through these virtues.
And you have to keep it strong and
keep it pure by
pushing
away those things that are the sicknesses of
the heart. And the book also lists the
number of sicknesses of the heart. Right? The
book also lists the number of sicknesses of
the heart.
Some of those sicknesses, we don't consider them
to be sickness. Like greed, we don't consider
it to be sickness anymore.
We motivate our children. Get an educate ask
any kid who goes to school. Why should
you get educated? Because I wanna get a
job. Why do you wanna get a job?
I wanna make money.
So So I, you know, I teach, like,
Islamic school kids, and so I tell them.
I said this haram that I could make
the intention of why you get education money.
I don't get it. And it's literally something
that they it doesn't compute. Why? Because this
is the upbringing that we give to them.
Right? This is the upbringing. This whole system.
Right? You have, like,
even in a quote unquote Islamic school, you
have 6 hours of class in a day,
right, and 5 days of class in a
week. And the Islamic studies teacher oftentimes is
unqualified
in the 1st place. And at any rate,
whether he's qualified or not, he gets 3
hours with the kids.
What's happening for the other 12 hours is
an education which is oftentimes diametrically opposed to
this education.
Right? But there are certain sicknesses of the
heart that will render that heart to be
unacceptable on that day. Okay?
But the idea is that these virtues of
the heart
and these virtues
hadith of the prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam,
doesn't
look at your
body, and he doesn't look at your your
your your,
appearance, like how beautiful you look, and he
doesn't look at your wealth. He doesn't care
about any of that stuff. Right? He created
the heavens and the earth from nothing. Right?
We're literally less significant to him than than
than the,
the microscopic
millions of bacteria they killed. Right?
Nobody does it. If you do, they'll probably
send you to the psychiatrist, and they should.
Right? This is Allah to Allah's mercy because
he is Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala.
There's no one like unto him that he's
able to have mercy
on on on on every single one of
his creations as insignificant as they are. Right?
He's able to have mercy on every single
one of them at the same time, and
it doesn't diminish from his capacities or faculties
in in the least. Right?
Do you think what do you think? You
think he created the heavens and earth from
nothing? Do you think, like, the fact that
someone, you know, one of these, like, micro
bacteria
has, like, better looking hair than the other,
or one of them drives a Tesla instead
of driving
a Honda Accord. You think he cares about
it? Is this you think these things impress
him at all? Absolutely not. Right? The hadith
is, verily Allah doesn't look at your bodies,
and he doesn't look at your physical appearance,
and he doesn't look at your wealth. Those
are all those things that are irrelevant to
him. Rather, he looks at what's inside of
your heart. Right? He looks at what's inside
of your heart, and if he if he
sees something beautiful inside of there, then he
has mercy on you, then he has mercy
on you, and then he then then you
earn his love. You earn his love and
you earn his his his
riba, his pleasure that he's pleased with you.
The rida of Allah is the highest goal
a person can make. Because that rida, if
Allah is pleased with a person, even this
world for him, that person becomes a jannah
or for her. And the next life is
literally jannah. It's literally paradise.
But the idea is that the identity that
we have to foster for ourselves and our
children, and oftentimes we do it in the
wrong order. We're like, oh, I want my
kids to be really good Muslims. Right? But
if you're not a good Muslim and you're
not they don't see you actually struggling and
trying to become a good Muslim, they're not
gonna do what you say. They're gonna do
what you do.
Many people come to the 'ulama and the
masha' if they say, oh, I want my
son to become an alim.
And the first thing
is, look at you. You don't even practice
the sharia yourself. You didn't even care. You
never bothered to learn even the jussamna yourself.
How is your son gonna become an alil?
How is he gonna become a hafib? It's
it's not gonna happen. Why? Because he learns
from what you do. They don't learn from
what you say. Right? So Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala, he he he himself, on the tongue
of the messenger of Allah
he himself and in his own book that
he revealed on the heart of his messenger
He identifies what those those tags are, what
those identities are that will make a person
successful, that we should identify
ourselves by.
He didn't say, oh, you're from a certain
country, now you're going to Jannah. Or, oh,
you're, you speak a certain language, and now
you're going to Jannah. Or, oh, you go
to the mosque once on Friday, and God
knows how much like, how do you go
to that mosque? You go on time? Are
you late? What intention you go with? What,
sincerity you go with or don't go with?
If if, you know, that your,
you know, candidate won the Masjid election,
you you go happily. And if your candidate
didn't win the Masjid election, then you, like,
boycott it and go to the other masjids
for the next 6 months. All of these
things, these things are important. Allah
sees what these things are. Are you going
because it's his house? Are you going because
it's his remembrance? Are you going for God
knows what? Right? So there are many things
that we do that are that are that
we think are Islamic, but they have nothing
to do with Islam.
And maybe there's a person
who sleeps at night without having any hasad
or rancor or or or both in his
heart for any other person, be they Muslim
or otherwise. And they sleep at night with
a clean heart. And maybe they don't have,
like, a beard. Maybe they don't wear a
turban. Maybe they don't have, like, nice hijab
or whatever or any hijab at all.
And I'm not the one who is because
a lot of people, they'll say these things
because they don't believe in the importance of
the outward,
keeping of the sacred law. Look at me.
Do you think I'm belittling these? These are
the sunnah of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam. Every sunnah of the Messenger of Allah
salallahu alaihi wa sallam
is is something that makes the world beautiful.
Every single sunnah of the Nabi salallahu alaihi
wa sallam is something that will and can
and will be a reason for the salvation
of entire nations, much less individuals on the
day of judgment, on the day where people
are going to be hungry and thirsty for
the mercy of Allah
Right? So I'm not belittling them. But I'm
saying what? Maybe a person who the identity
politics part of the practice of Islam has
left them
behind a little bit.
But inside of their heart, they do what
the prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasallam, instructed us to
do. And at that time,
right, will a rose by any other name
not be smell as sweet?
Right? Does a rose by any other name
not smell as sweet? Right? Does does does
a person who has objectively, right, from a
from a principal perspective,
does a person who has objectively,
claimed for themselves an identity which involves the
acceptance and the love of Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala. Is that person any way behind?
And on the flip side, the most loud
mouth Muslim, I'm a Muslim this, and I'm
a Muslim that, and this and that, and
the Muslim world this, and, you know, this
political party and that political party in this
country and the other country. And, you know,
you know, goes around badgering people about the
the the, you know, certain outward practices of
the deen. I know people like this. I
know people like this. I, myself, am. We're
very flustered by people like this. Oh, this
guy, he didn't go like this while he's
praying. Or this guy, he didn't say amen
out loud. Or he said amen out loud.
Or he did this
praying. Or this guy, he didn't say Amin
out loud. Or he said Amin out loud.
Or he did this. These are like small
things. These are not these are not principled
matters.
Matters of differences, legitimate differences of opinion between
people. Right? And they fixate on these, like,
small things, and they lose the bigger picture
of what what what the principles of what
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala tried to tell us
about identity. And you wanna know about identity
is that you have to person's
spiritual apparatus
that
is very keen
which is also a part of a person's
spiritual apparatus that is very keenly linked with
identity and with with the ego of a
person, literally. Right? We're commanded to what? Fight
against it. You're commanded to fight against your
own identity
and not to destroy yourself because then it
would be act of piety to kill yourself.
Suicide would be an act of piety, which
it's not. There are religions in the world
that suicide is an act of piety. Like,
Jainism, for example,
the the the the
reaching of spiritual,
enlightenment and fulfillment involves
wandering naked into the forest and starving yourself
to death, which is an act of self
immolation that you're not gonna harm any other
living thing. And you whatever. You reach some
sort of form of realization.
Although we respect them as human beings, we
disagree with them regarding this this matter. Right?
It's not considered a act of how you
can kill yourself. But what do you do?
You you have who you are,
and you have to remodel it. Just like
we remodeled. Right? The tables weren't here before.
Why? Because during Jo'a, we're not going to,
you know, have dinner.
So the purpose of the hall is different.
Right? So people are born with the hall
in some configuration,
and a lat'aal has a different purpose when
you order you to remodel what's inside of
yourself. You have to literally struggle against your
own identity.
You have to struggle against your own identity.
The consequence of the people who struggle against
their own identity
buy them It will be the price by
which they purchase eternal life and happiness.
And the consequence of not doing that,
of doggedly holding on to a person's useless
identity, unprincipled identity,
ultimately useless identity is
what? Is that the person, the
person will will end up in the fire.
And this is not a rhetorical flourish by
a professional preacher or demagogue. Right?
And preferred the life of this world over
the hereafter.
For that person, the blazing pit of fire
is their abode.
And as for the one who feared the
day, who always feared the day that they
would stand in front of their lord,
Literally denied themselves those part of
those part
of identity
which they identified with, but Allah ta'ala said
you have to cast these things aside. Right?
That person,
For them, jannah is their paradise is the
eternal
abode. And this literally comes as Sahih Muslim.
This is one of the punishments of the
people of the hellfire. May Allah be our
protection.
May Allah be our protection from such an
end. May Allah be our protection from us.
Everybody say, ameen. One of the punishments of
the people of the fire is what? It
comes literally indeed,
Sahih Muslim. Right? That the Messenger of Allah
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said what? That the
fire will efface their
faces.
Nobody will they'll have no more use for
their names. And the fire will efface their
faces. It will literally erase their faces. They
will be nameless and faceless anonymous people suffering
torment forever.
And this is a fitting punishment. This is
a fitting punishment for a person
who preferred
a useless identity
over what the command of Allah
was. And they used that identity to be
selfish and to oppress other people, to build
themselves into a false idol
against what they should have done and how
they should have lived in this world.
And so we seek refuge in Allah
from that type of identity and the preservation
of those parts of our identity, which are
unpleasing to Allah
and
ultimately irrational,
ultimately lead to problems.
Right? Racism leads to problems. And if you
think that racism is something that non Muslims
deal with, well, welcome to the real world,
the Muslim community. We have that. We have
people who call.
Muslims, both of them say,
Someone calls another person by racial epithet.
Right?
Everybody does
it. It's not funny. Be a person of
courage. Be a person of courage.
And say to somebody who says that in
front of you, who says that says a
derogatory word about another person because of race
or because of wealth or because of any
one of these irrelevant factors too, what the
worth of a human being is. Say to
them, this is not cool. That's not
funny. That's not funny. You know, if you're
gonna talk like that, you know, I I
that's I'm not I don't understand where you're
coming from. You don't have to be like,
oh, I'm gonna kill you. I'm gonna hit
you. I'm gonna never be friends with you
again or whatever. But you just you could
say that. You could say this much. You
could say, yo, man. I don't think that's
funny.
I'm not cool with that. I don't know
what why you think that this is an
okay okay thing to say. Say it. Be
be be a person who is,
upright. Be a person who why? If nobody
else hears or says it, Allah hears it
and says it and Allah Ta'ala is pleased
with the person who who does that because
it means what? You you value the priority
that he commanded you to value over your
own priorities.
Right? So we seek refuge in preserving those
parts of identity which are going to be
the things that drag us literally into,
torment and wrath into the punishment of Allah
ta'ala. Those things that are the enemies
of rational thinking,
of logical thinking.
Right? That a person, because of which part
of the dirt of the earth they're made
out of, we treat them one way and
the other. Those things are irrelevant. This is
this is like illogical, irrational line of thinking,
and we hurt ourselves and harm ourselves first
before we harm other people by by doing
stuff like that. Believe me. Right? And on
the flip side, we should find out. Right?
Just because, again, just because you go to
the
or to a conference or to you know,
because you're Muslim or from a certain country
or speak a certain language or you know,
eat briyani or eat a shawarma or whatever,
it doesn't mean that you know what these
things are. What are the parts of identity
that Allah commanded
us to and which are the parts of
identity he forbid us from. Read the books
of Deen with the ulama, with the people
of knowledge, with the people of learning. Learn
what those things are. Right? It takes it's
difficult. It requires that you, you know, you
you give from your time consistently.
And it requires that you humble and suppress
your nafs enough that you can accept that
whatever
Allah is, rasool, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, say
is correct, whatever my my opinions are, I
don't have an opinion until I hear from
them.
This is not an easy thing to do.
This is harder than lifting weights and running
marathons.
It's a very difficult thing to do. But
a person who does it, Allah gives them
great and gives them great tawfi.
May Allah
make us the people that he loves, may
that be our identity, right, and we abide
by forever, and may he protect protect us
and us from ever being somebody that earns
his hatred or earns his wrath or earns
his anger because of his
mercy over outstrips his wrath and overpowers his
wrath. The only one he's angry with is
the person who really went out of their
way to deserve it. May Allah protect us
from such an end.
Questions?
Yeah. Go ahead, inshallah. Questions? Now I'll sit
down.