Hamzah Wald Maqbul – Restoring the Sacred in Activism Masjid Huda Union City CA 09042021
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AI: Transcript ©
I was given this topic
about
activism.
And
it's such an important topic.
It needs to be looked at
from so many different angles.
And I'll start with the people that we
have here.
Hafiz Khosr, masha'Allah, was probably doing what he
normally does, running around,
helping make stuff happen.
I met him the first time
very shortly after I came back from Madrasah
to the United States of America.
He was in the
MSA at UC Davis.
I went southwest
in MSA before I went to Madrasa.
And the MSA
is
here. And so
one of the things I found within his
MSA and then I saw that thing repeated
in a number
of MSA's after having come back.
Is that generally the
brothers had a bent toward wanting
to
make vikar and have some halapat
and learn it. And the sisters wanted to
protest stuff.
I don't know if this is still like
the dynamic in,
in people's, places that they go to college.
Of course, myself, when I was in MSA,
we used to do both of them,
with a relative amount
of excitement and enthusiasm.
And
I thought about talking about this subject
through that frame. What's the relationship between
the 2 of them?
Look at the life of Rasulullah Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam.
That the Rasul Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam for 6
months before receiving the first wahi.
What did he do, Alaihi Wasallam?
He would go to the God of hirah.
He would worship Allah
in a way known between him and the
Lord.
And he prepared himself for the receiving of
the Wahi.
And the first Wahi was
as many people
know.
It was through this journey of self purification,
and
preparation
that the Rasulullah
was able to receive Iqra. And even then
he received Iqra first and then he received
You hadl,
Mud dafir kum fa anfir later.
But this doesn't necessarily mean that you have
to fulfill or come to one process first
and then you start the other.
This is a very subtle point.
It doesn't mean that you fulfill one process
first and then you start the other, but
there is a logical order in things.
What do we mean by logical order? There
are certain things that have rational order, they
have rational priority,
and certain things have chronological order and chronological
priority.
Rational priority means what? That when you're counting,
you have to get to 1 before you
get to 2. Right? So if you have,
for example, like, the pile of 5 things,
you have to count 1, 2, 3, 4
5. You count 2 before you count 3.
You count 3 before you count 4. You
count 4 before you count 5. But all
of them exist at the same time, don't
they?
There's a rational priority to
a person straightening out certain
important
vital
elements of their self.
You have to make sure that the mind
is straight. The Islam of the mind happens
through what? Through the study of al Hayd.
You have to make sure that the heart
is straight.
That is the heart happens through what?
Through the soul of straight meaning to some
sort of minimum functional level.
You'll keep going through those that journey for
the rest of your life, but it should
at least be functional.
That your practice has to be straight. You
have to
pray 5 times a day and fulfill whatever
the things Allah made fart on you,
which usually are the the
the 5 daily prayers
and the fasting in the month of Ramadan.
If you have enough money, you have to
pay to know how to do that and
to do that properly, etcetera, etcetera. But this
is not a,
this is not at the end of the
journey. It's the beginning of the journey.
And that journey will continue.
The journey of worshipping Allah, of purifying yourself,
of purifying the heart, of making sure that
you do things with his loss for the
sake of Allah
etcetera. That journey will always continue. It doesn't
stop there.
Once you have those few very basic
personal necessities down,
then it's also part of your journey that
you should
be an activist. But what does that mean?
There are various facets of activism that are
discussed in the Quran. At the end of
the day, what did he say?
You're the best of
and you forbid that which is evil and
you believe in Allah
Let there be from the ones who abandoned
people who
commanded that which is right and forbid that
which is evil.
And call to,
the call to what's good and command to
what is what is right and forbid that
which is evil.
The idea is that you're we're
the
idea is that you're we're not like, you
know, we don't we don't have this idea
like for example orthodox Jews have which is
that we focus on ourselves and we're kind
of inward looking and other people what they
do is their problem. That's not
the sunnah of the Prophet
it never was.
And this is a trick of shaitan as
well to get a person to
just focus, look in towards themselves with this
idea that what? Straighten yourself up first, then
you can go and straighten other people out.
And And the fact that the matter is
imagine if you're, you know, like,
Will it look like a mockery? Absolutely, it
will.
And drinking is one of those things total
people can see it. You know, if you're
a drunkard, they see that on you. But
there are all sorts of other parts of
sharia that we are obliged to follow and
obliged to command to.
And
our non compliance with those things are easily
hidden from
people. The commandment towards sincerity.
The commandment to love Allah as Rasulullah
more than anyone else.
The commandment to love what's good and to
hate what's evil.
These things a person can
mask them inside of their heart. A person
can have a turban and a and a
beard and a and a and a
and everything, all of that stuff.
This is something
and I, we went to
a number of different places
in our lives trying to do something or
another for the sake of
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala in our activism.
So one of the places we went, we
went to chicken plant in Western Washington.
And I remember the you know, had a
good talk with the with the back with
the head of sales.
And he, you know, very self confident and
said, you have to have 3
3 things believe in 3 there are 3
things you have to believe in the product.
You have to believe in your product that
it's a good product. You have to believe
in your
your, price that is a good price. And
you have to believe in yourself also that
I can sell this.
And I said I said, aren't you forgetting
the most important belief? He's like, which one
is that? And I just kind of big
shout out towards this guy. He said, yeah.
That one too. You need to
Right?
So if you don't if you're yourself not
willing to buy the product, then you think
anyone's gonna buy it from you.
If you think, like, you know, not transacting
or if you think that, you know,
praying and making a figure in the Hajj
is not worth it.
I'm bored. It's boring. It's tedious. It doesn't
really change anything. I did that a 100
times. Nothing happened. Making dua. Do you think
when you tell another person to do those
things? You think it's gonna have any effect?
Absolutely not.
However, you're still the the strange thing is
the commandment to
invite people to good and to command it
that which is right and forbid that which
evil, which is evil is still not obviated
from you. You're still required to do those
things.
And one of the insights that I learned
from my studies,
in Madrasah
and from looking over the lives of the
masha'i and the mawiyah
is that sometimes shaitan
fools you. Why? By saying first, perfect yourself
in the first
place, then you can go and tell other
people.
Why? Because sometimes going to tell other people
is one of the best ways of working
on yourself.
Look at the
Did the prophet
you know,
because many of us we want a that's
like not a like birthday cake shake. You
know birthday cake,
One of the best ways, one of the
best ways of
yourself
increasing in in in Maqam with
Allah Yourself learning all those lessons of Tasawwuf,
how to humble yourself,
how to love for the sake of Allah,
how to hate for the sake of Allah,
how to trust
in Allah etcetera, is what by going through
this this this process of trying to benefit
your
fellow men,
trying to benefit the the creation. And there's
so many ways that you can do them
that falls within the habit of activism.
Some of them, mashallah, a lot of us,
you know, we wanna
protest and, you know,
help them, we won't go and rah rah
rah. This that and the other thing. There's
some room for
Speaking the truth is something that will make
enemies out of your own relatives for you.
Look what it did for the Prophet
But we're people that we don't, you know,
we don't pull punches, right. There's a difference
between hikma and tatiya. Hikma is knowing
what the right way of saying the truth
is
and how to say it in the best
way possible. It doesn't mean hiding it. Right?
Hikma doesn't mean that, like, you know, 20
years go by and you don't tell somebody
what's going on.
Okay. Fine. If today is not a good
day, maybe tomorrow we're using this word. It
is not good, then use the other one.
Right?
Uh-uh. Abdullah
jihadi said that the best of jihad is
to say word of truth in the face
of a tyrant.
I read a story about Ahlud Madari Moan,
say Sayna Hud Madari Rahim Abu Wa Ta'ala.
That once when he was,
uh-uh once when he was called to court
to the British court for
having given the fatwa that it's haram for
a Muslim to join the British colonial army.
The judge said to him, is it true
that you gave his fat away? He says,
of course, it's true.
He said, look look where you are, who
you're in front of, what are you saying?
And so he said, he took his job
around. He took out his his his,
his shawl,
his white shawl. And he held it in
the air and says,
This is Hussain Ahmad that came from Dhirubat
of mine, coffin in my hand,
With my burial shroud in my hand.
That's what speaking the truth is. Right? And
one of the nice lines from when we
read the Faturah Umrah. Right?
That we're the Ummah of people. We speak
the truth even if it takes us to
the gallows.
Look look how
sad and how unfortunate it is that this
tradition of ours has been wasted.
Go to Muslim countries and see how people
have become accustomed to lying.
Look at ourselves also how we become afraid
of the truth, and that people of Baathir
have become so enamored. They've fallen so in
love with
and how afraid we are of the truth.
The truth is something so powerful. Forget about
when people say, look, these guys are telling
tall tales and, like, fairy tale stories about
their
and things like that. It's like listening to
something about King Arthur and Camelot, you know.
Forget about all of that for a second.
Why is it that they freed the slaves
in America? Did the did the slaves ever
have a rebellion and force them by
by means of arms? How did the civil
rights amendment pass this country? Was it because
at some point or another there's an armed
insurrection and somebody demanded their rights by force?
No. What it was, how does it let
people sleep at night?
Things came out in the in the news
and white people
who themselves have no material interest in civil
rights. They would see these things are happening.
The people themselves would see these things are
happening, and it was put in their face
in such an inconvenient way that they couldn't
ignore it, and they couldn't sleep at night.
It just it had to change.
If it happens today, it happens today. If
it happens tomorrow, it happens tomorrow. Haqqiqah is
one of the names of Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala. Who's the one who can overwhelm it?
There are so many things a person can
do that fall under the guise of activism.
What's the original pool of activism in the
sunnah of the prophet
park or whatever.
What's the second thing?
Feed people.
This was a great
tradition
of
our the
open
the the the the the the the the
the the the the the the the the
the the the the the the the the
the the the the the the the the
the the the the the the the the
the the the the the the the the
the the the the the the the the
the the the the the the the the
and prisoners. They used to feed the poor.
One of the fun things is that nowadays,
what is activism?
You're screaming, you're putting a new filter on
Facebook or on on on, Twitter or on
Instagram or on Snapchat or all of them
TikTok or Allahu Island, whatever, you know, thing
is gonna come after that.
Where
your mother and your grandmother,
who don't know
what tariqa they're in,
and we can't point to a or, some
sort of, like, fancy, you know, high quality
copy of
a CD looking edition of some weird book.
And
who don't
have designer shawls and,
designer this and that, you know, clothing gear
from here and there and the other place.
But what's the Islam that they know?
The Islam that they know is cooking.
They go briyani and sending it to the
Masjid to
driver,
it's
Even for the driver, it's something that's really,
like, mind boggling.
It's so efficient.
Why can't we have an app
that,
you know, has these remote kitchens that it's
like the big new field people, like all
the people that invest in the space are
talking about it. It's a buzz, like, you
know, that that that you have,
that that you have these kitchens
that are are there basically for catering,
those those, like, Uber Eats and Grubhub type
orders.
Why can't we do that for feeding the
board
That I have, you know, my
uncle is going in for surgery this week,
and so I'm going to feed the poor.
And so you just text some, you know,
amount of money and a kitchen will make
sure that those people get fed. After all,
in traditional, you know, traditional societies, those things
used to happen. We can still do that
in a lot of Muslim countries to this
day.
Why is it though that we're, you know,
like, we're we're not thinking about
those things, those things that are, you know,
low hanging fruit.
If you wanna talk about activism, the superlative,
the superlative activism
which is described in the book of Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala in the sunnah the something
that we can't really even think about. We
can't we can't even like bear to sustain
the
fatherhood for for for
for for more than just a couple of
seconds.
That Allah
commanded this
struggle in the path of Allah. It's
right that we should struggle.
That a person should give their life for
the sake of Allah are
manifold
in the Quran and in the sunnah, the
Prophet to the point where Allah
forbids the believers from saying that the person
who gives his life for the sake of
Allah is dead. That those people are alive
but you don't you don't you're unaware of
it. That those people are alive and they're
receiving their sustenance from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
with the Lord. That is an act of
piety for a person to make dua
That the
the
he came out of the house and confronted
him and,
you know,
the Mamluk is like an official of the
state. He's armed. He's like a warrior. This
is just a a scholar. What is he
gonna do? There's no recourse, you know, if
if the government kills you, you know, you
can it's not really anything that's gonna happen
afterward.
So he went out to chastise the man
and the man cried back and asked for
forgiveness and went home.
And the son of the
Ezeban of the Son said to his father,
like, how
did you do that? Why did you do
that? He was here coming here to kill
you.
And he said, I know what you're thinking.
But at last, you know, I just thought
that
for whatever reason, like, I'm not worthy that
this day of Allah should give me Shahadah.
Obviously, it's just the law. It's it's it's
just the law. It's it's humility.
But people used to consider to be a
great honor.
I'm not talking about actually being a shimidian.
I'm just talking about the idea that a
person should desire this thing. That they should
think of it as something good. Whereas nowadays,
we think about that as a stupidity with
someone they just went and wasted their life.
You don't waste your life and say, oh,
Allah, and nobody waste their life. There's obviously
better
ways of doing this,
you know,
than what some people do. But if a
person gives their life the sake of Allah
there's nothing there's nothing in the world that's
better than that. We used to be a
people that understood that there was a common
value amongst us.
And because of that, Allah
gives so much barakah in this world and
then you'll see how much barakah comes in
the hereafter. That's where the real
barakah will come from, you know, having such
a having such a noble and lofty goal
inside of a person's heart.
That's the activism of what of Islam and
it's for the sake of Allah
The issue with what we call activism nowadays
is that it's mostly based around identity.
I have an identity, and I'm going to
intersect with other people who have other identities,
and we're gonna go and protest for our
identity.
And
it's bad enough when people do it for
nationalistic purposes.
Nationalism is an ideal. Remember, if there's anyone
who flies a flag
But when a person when a person drives
some sort of magical
connection
from it, thinking that a line
drawn on a map
by some Catherine who died a long time
ago.
Well, it was for that matter. But mostly,
nowadays,
That that's something to that's something to,
agitate over?
No.
Activism is what for the sake of Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
After
India received its independence from
the from the,
British usurper and colonizer.
There was actually a
and I mentioned this in by hand so
many times, and it's important we should remember
these things. That there was actually a ceremony
that the Indian government had,
and they presented him with an award, and
they presented him all the people who were
like the means, quote, unquote, freedom fighters. They,
you know, presented them with
cash prize and with a lifetime railway pass
and then allotment of a house and things
like that. And and honor of their services
for the for the nation.
That he came with his with his
companions, with his associates,
to that ceremony. And he received like whatever
honorary token of the word certificate or whatever.
And he returned everything else.
And he said bluntly in front of everybody.
Hindus and Buddhists and Christians and, you know,
people of different faiths.
He was a man who engaged with the
public. He was a member front of everybody,
what did he say? He
He said, we received the reward and we
also have we we we feel joy and
pride this day that we
freed our homeland from,
a usurper
who treated us like garbage and you
know despoiled
know, our land and our people, treated them
like 2nd class citizens
and defiled the,
the ways of our forefathers.
Said, but as for the railway pass and
the money, the house allotment, so we didn't
do this for anything in this world. We
did this for the sake of Allah and
we expect we have good hope. We're gonna
ask for our reward the day we meet
him. That's where we're gonna take it. We're
not gonna take it over here.
How different is that than going to a
protest and say, well, you know, like,
Muslims were gonna align with the alphabet soup
of all these different pronouns. If someone
knows more about that, he can tell you
about,
you know,
all the different, like, whatever, 57 different pronouns
floating around.
That we're gonna lie with them and we're
gonna lie with the, you
alliance and, you know, it's gonna offend such
and such people and don't, you know, use
too much Arabic when you speak and you
know, don't dress a certain way because you're
gonna scare people with your beard and with
your hair and with your turban and your
hijab and this
and
that.
Right?
Whose sake is it for?
Is it for the sake of Allah?
That I have a grievance and that the
solution to my problems is that if only
like you know
because of the last census you know, 15.7%
of people have like the exact same shade
of pigment that I have.
So until there's 15.7%
of the congress has the same pigment of
color of purple that I am,
I'm going to agitate a yelling screen
and until all the panels that we have
speaking have the same percentage, I'm gonna add
to what is it? It's all nonsense.
You tell me something.
Is a person is a person judged by
the color of their skin or by the
content of their character?
So then why is, you know, balancing balancing
percentages, gender, etcetera? Why is balancing percentages of,
somehow then relevant?
Muslims always always their most successful states and
their most success successful movements were always run
to run meritocracy.
People of merit, people of competence rose to
the top.
Unfortunately, this is something, you know, I don't
wanna speak on anybody else's behalf, but I've
seen it myself.
When an organization
ossifies, it becomes
becomes
petrifies it. It just becomes rock. It doesn't
it's no longer functional anymore. What do we
trade? We trade
seniority or we trade demographics
and so and so and so or whatever.
In exchange for what? For for meritocracy. For
merit. Why? Because you need merit in order
to recognize it. Once you stop recognizing it,
then you start to look for it in
places that you won't find it. You're barking
at the wrong tree like the the the
famous hikaya, the Latifa, I should say,
let's help you. So they're all looking under
the street light. And after, like, 45 minutes,
they're like, where did you see it last?
So I saw it over there. I said,
why are you looking over here? Well, there's
no light there. I can't see anything. This
is what we do. But it's what we
do, isn't it?
We can't follow
this,
this model of activism.
It's a waste of time, it's a dead
end, you're barking up the wrong tree. It's
not gonna give you anything useful. At the
end of the day, the alphabet
sub of pronouns is not gonna help you.
What you do, you do for the sake
of Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala and you do
according to what?
According to the wahi and the the ayah
that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has given through
his prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
And that's one of the reasons it's so
important to,
you know, sit and
learn from the mushay, learn from the Balama.
What is the sunnah?
Because I see especially in the last couple
of weeks, a lot of people, you know,
while the prophet said, if he was here,
he wouldn't have done this. And if he
was there, he wouldn't have done that. But
you know, the thing is you can't it's
wrap the talk up inshallah, I'm
not gonna take the entire time. It's late.
One particular book that the left for us
is in this end times. If you want
to know what is the way that a
activist should be
brought up and ready for activism and then
how they should
then be active in society.
It's a wonderful book compiled by the law
of use of It's
called Hajj Salhabah. It's a book completely
Allah.
Bin
Hajj.
The books are there. You can read it
and it's like it's not a perfect process.
This is another thing much of people for
some reason have in their mind and we
you know, irreligious people use it to bat
religious people down. And religious people also use
it as a cop out in order to
not do work.
Which is what? Until I'm perfect, then I
can't say anything to anyone. I can't do
anything.
Do you think the companions or the Allah
won't never made mistakes in in in what
they did for the sake of Allah?
Do you think said the Khaled will either
or the Allah won't never made a mistake
or read the books or
Do you think
never made a mistake? Or read the books
go read the books of do you think
never made a mistake? You think that,
you think that the, you know, the armies
never made mistakes? You think the people never
made mistakes, go read the books, go read
the books of hadith, you'll see that. That
there were people, they made mistakes and they're
the thing the reason we said, are they
allowed on a bomb about them is that
they're the first ones to repent.
And they're the ones who used to cry
and weep over their mistakes, and used to
rectify, used to make it right again for
people. They also were people who would say
like, oh, well, you know,
my attention was good. So like, you know,
Allah forgive me. No. They used to make
it right with people. They used to give
people restitution.
Sayna,
there's an incident. I won't narrated it in
his complete
detail. But it's a well known incident that
he once had a spat with Sayyidina Bilal
radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu.
They had a verbal exchange in which he
said something
to him that hurt his feelings, that was
an inappropriate thing to say.
And he asked for forgiveness in the most
humble of ways.
And they forgave each other.
That's that's how that's how this thing is
going to happen. It's not gonna happen until
you wait until you're, you know, Guruji, you're
making your zikr and then somehow you start
floating in the air until light
comes out of your fingertips, and you can
see the future and know what the stock
price of, you know, Amazon is gonna be,
you know, in on December 22nd.
Then until then, you're not allowed to say
anything to anyone or do anything.
That's not how it works.
Remember what was the thing that we've been
start mentioned at the beginning. There's a basic
modicum of knowledge and an understanding a person
has to have in order to get get
going in in their Islam. It's called the
Fardai.
And there's a basic modicum of practice that
a person has has to have before they
get going.
And it's called it's all
After
that,
doing the doing the khidba, doing the activism,
feeding the poor, speaking the truth, standing for
the person who doesn't have anyone to stand
for them. You know, vouchsafe and hap for
those people who are
nobody vouchsafe their their their rights for them,
whether they're Muslims or not.
All of these things. A person's own personal
Islam happens
with them and through them.
And it's like a baby. The baby is
not gonna say, okay, first the head has
to grow,
and then when the head becomes full size,
adult size, then the right hand will grow
because the right hand is right.
And then after it, I'll grow the left
hand.
Tell me you're a you're a medical professional.
There were an embryo that developed that way.
Do you think that embryo the fetus would
be viable?
Or die. It wouldn't it wouldn't survive. It's
impossible to be like that.
But the issue is this is that what,
you know, what is your grounding? What is
your model of what you wanna do? Are
you going to do are you gonna do
that? Are you gonna just jump in like
a, you know, with your eyes closed?
I I wrote a paper on this topic,
by the way. I don't know if anyone
read it. I wrote a paper about the
Black Lives Matter Movement.
Did anyone else read it?
You can go to go to rebat.org
website and read it. Right?
Black Lives Matter. Who would object to that
in their right mind? If you don't believe
that black lives matter, I think, you know,
we have some of these in the audience.
It's like kufir.
Right?
But does that mean that we jump in
with an organization whose, you know, goal
is to disrupt
the heteronormative
family
unit.
No. It's ridiculous.
But why why is it that we have
no we have no
platform through which we can speak and express
ideas except for through joining that
or through joining the Republican party or the
Democratic party?
Why? It's because as a community, whether the
individuals here, you guys are all biased people.
You guys are all all in the program
and whatever. Right? But the community as a
as a whole that we belong to and
that we're also responsible for.
Their imagination is so dead that they don't
see a way of doing things based on
their own values. They only see value in
casting lot in with others.
As an ad hoc measure, yes. You know,
you should make alliances
with people.
Make it very clear what the terms and
parameters of those alliances are
and you know hold to your ends in
the bargain, I get that.
But at the end of the day there's
no political vision
at all, whatsoever.
There's no vision for tomorrow except for what
another person tells us. You know how you
can tell this is the case? Look who's
the the most trending Muslim quote unquote Muslim
leader speaker
in any given time.
It's the person who CNN the Muslim that
CNN interviews, it's the Muslim that BBC interviews,
and the Muslim that Fox News interviews. They're
the person who gets invited to the next
conference.
Him and everybody else who died in
but they turned him into a war hero.
Poor guy died so that
gas prices are under $4 a gallon.
And he's now a leader and a spokesperson
for our community.
I don't wanna antagonize the guy. The guy
is, like, you know, individual, he seems like
a very decent man. But, like, is that
the limit of what we have?
Or can we not organize with one another
for something
more visionary,
more in line with what we know is
the only thing that's gonna save us. The
only thing that's gonna save us in this
world and the hereafter is Laila hilillah Muhammadur
Rasulullah.
It's the only thing that will save anybody.
Don't you know that? Don't you see that?
Who do you think the Muslims have a
bleak future in this country?
There are some people they're not raising their
hands because it's not a cool thing to
say in Muslim.
Right? People hate us. We're, like, less popular
than
a number of
not well liked groups
to put it mildly.
Nobody nobody even is having children. Forget about
fighting wars and forget about joining political parties
and this and that and the other. Muslims
just keep having children at the wreath that
they are. China will be our country. Russia
will be our country. United States will be
our country. Europe will be ours. It's just
a matter of time.
They they're they're just the same, like, you
know, the same, like, mindless drones, but, like,
they celebrate Eid instead of so, you know,
like,
not instead of they celebrate Eid along with
Christmas and Hanukkah and dinos, whatever, you know,
Festivals and for the rest of it. But
then, what other weird things there are. Right?
The thing is this, Allah
already put the the
the map for survival and for success in
this month.
And whether people do it intentionally or not,
there are still so many safeguards that are
going to
cause the Muslims to be successful.
What we need to do is
instead of letting it run on autopilot, we
need to get together. We need to look
and see. Okay. Who's the person who says
something that makes sense to you?
You know, does,
you know, activist
brother, Fulan, or activist brother, sister, Fulana
make more sense? Does Imam Mitt Zayed make
more sense?
Or does some Qadyan actor who receives an
Emmy Award?
Is he a better person to be, the
face of the rising influence of Islam in
America or Mohammad Amin?
Or does some comedian
who utters blasphemy in order to get some
laughs from a kafir?
Is that person a better face for Islam
in America
or is you know one of our other,
you know, ulama
who've been working
in the hood or working in the streets
or working to feed people at home or
abroad.
Who've been there you know, to say the
haqqwa whether it's a political issue or social
issue. Who is it? Who is it that
we wanna cast our lot in with? Or
are we just gonna say, you know what?
Who am I what am I to do
anything? I'm not gonna cast my lot in
with anyone. Just
whatever happens, happens. And you just leave the
the people. Allah gave this Umma
those things that he didn't give anybody else.
Allah gave this Umma
those people that he never gave anyone else.
The Nasara can't show you someone like Abu
Bakr Siddiq radiAllahu.
They can't show you someone like Sayin Nawa
radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu.
Who are their great kings and rulers?
Constantine himself lived as a kafar, he lived
as a pagan for his entire life, he
only converted on his deathbed.
Allah, I don't know if that's even historically
accurate or not. Who are the kings that
they sainted? You know, Saint Louis?
Saint Louis, like Missouri and like Louisville, Kentucky
is named after a French king who they
sainted. Why did the why did the Catholic
church sainted? Because he used to make more
on the Muslims all the time. He has
something like 7 or 13 illegitimate children.
I said, we
wouldn't even let that person do the adhan,
like, on a Tuesday like,
you guys made him into a saint?
Allah gave us people in every generation. He
didn't give anyone anything like it.
It's our choice as well. You know, some
point we can blame blame, you know, this
person in that country in this politician and
whatever. Allah won't ask you, if you're not
like making those decisions at that level, he's
not gonna ask you about the things that
you had no ability to influence. But he
will ask you about the things that you
did.
That who are those masha'i that you know,
you put your hands in with their hands
and said, Okay we're gonna do, you know
we're gonna follow your lead on these things,
We're gonna follow. We're gonna do what you
do. Because one of the things that is
really weird about Islam in America
is that,
as a theory, for example, 5th is not
5th is not manipulated by the government.
5th is arbitrated by the. They have discussions
between each other that transcend, like, international boundaries
and time and space and all these other
things. Right? Fit is completely,
an exercise completely independent of the government.
And then what happens is from the
from the body of Fuqaha,
certain people are appointed as judges and then
that kind of theoretical
body of law then starts to become applied.
We enjoy so much being in America that
every discussion that we have about the
deen is so theoretical
to the point of paying Fajr in the
Masjid. It's theoretical for most people who praise
Fajr in the Masjid.
There are people who were born and raised
in this country that are my age and
your age that have never heard the Alana
Fajr before.
It's true. I was one of them until
maybe I was 18 or so.
Never heard the Alana Fajr before.
To that point and then imagine other parts
of it, it's all theoretical.
Right? There's difference of opinion of the and
it's a Rahma, etcetera etcetera. We get all
of that. At some point or another, people
should apply these things. They should
have some leadership. If they knew yourself or
a scholar, then pick.
If you're uh-uh
you know, somebody who is connected with the
then
stick with the choice that they give you.
Make something real. Make something practical.
Do something.
Until we have this ability to and that's
a whole separate this is one of the
reasons we should read the Sahaba. It's a
whole separate skill set. It's a whole separate
skill set. You have 20 people. I've seen
this before. We have, like, a group of
people in Bellevue. Okay?
3 guys, they they said we we need
a sorry. Like, 5 or 7 of them.
They said we need a Khalifa. Where where
does the law work? So we need a
feel off of them. We're gonna have we
Muslims need
a Muslims need a place. They got together
about between them, like, like, 7 guys at
pixel and it was Khalifa. By the end
of the week, he was down to 3.
And the 3 guys, you know, they they
were going hardcore for a a couple of
weeks in, like, 3, 4
months. The guy, their Hanifa used to wear
a turban, you know, and come to the
master and pray this and that. This is
their guy. They're gonna back and spread it.
And then, like, after a couple of months,
like, they're like, no. You know,
like, there is the the you know,
Other than the the
ridiculousness
of
the face value of it,
it's a real problem though.
If 7 people don't have the ability to
get together and obey them here
in something as like short transitory, like, as
a trip. We're gonna we're gonna go from
Union City to Sacramento for 7 days.
And I wanted to stop at Taco Bell.
Amir is like, no, we're gonna we're gonna
like
stop at the grocery store instead.
And I can't leave that down,
I can't accept it.
So this is all, as then you know,
it's supposed to make much for you, it's
supposed to have mercy on people and this
and that and that and that and that
and that and that and that thing or
whatever. We we laugh about it. Who's who's
here ready? Who's here ready? Go ahead.
Any of you guys snickering, you pick one
of you to be the Amir and let's
see who's the first one who breaks.
These things, they require some sort of practicality.
They require some sort of practice. They require
some sort of commitment. They require some sort
of regularity.
That's the way that's the way you're going
to be able to move forward in progress
in your
activism as well.
This is a capacity that was there in
African American community in this country.
You saw the movie Malcolm X.
You saw the complete, you know, other than
the nation of Islam has obviously, they're not
Muslims or whatever. But as a just as
a as a unit, right? How cohesive they
were?
How
they trusted one another not to cause a
riot. They trusted one another to be able
to show up at a certain time and
show up at a certain place and follow
orders, not to be like a herd of
cats.
You're not gonna be able to do that
by watching a movie, you do that by
practice. So inshallah the tashqil you know there's
no point in having bad without having the
shiel at the end, right?
The tashqil as well.
Else, find a place and learn those things
if you haven't learned them yet formally.
If you don't have, you know, someone or
another with Ijazah who gives you this Ijazah.
Not just that you're familiar with it.
And along with that, find find find some
group of people
amongst you, of someone you think is Russian,
someone you think is rightly guided.
And stick to some sort of plan with
them. Whether it's feeding or whether it's,
you know, whether it's some sort of political
activism. Not everyone is gonna do the same
thing. It's okay.
But stick to some sort of plan. If
you live in a place where you're on
your own Mahindra to somewhere where you can
do the work with somebody.
Because this is one of the secrets of
Rasulullah
told us, told us that
Allah
is with these, his hand is with the,
with the congregation, with the group.
And he also told us that Shaitan follows
the sheep
that strays from the flock.
Think about these things and act them inside
of your life. Allah Subhanu wa Ta'ala give
all of us InshaAllah, I myself will
InshaAllah
adhere to this advice on myself. This is
the reason I'm here standing in front of
you like you know decompressing my spine every
3 minutes and crutches is why? Because Mullah
started this noble effort.
We live in a place that just a
couple of years ago, even the younger ones
amongst us is within your living memory, we
put it to you and find the fausta
in the Darawy, in the Masadid and look
at that tomorrow we're having a khatam of
Bukhari.
Alhamdulillah.
And sticking together with the plan, mashallah,
you know all of these brothers that we've
been seeing year in year out,
sleep deprived,
running from pillar to post to Masjid UHuda
and Islahi Jalsa, and this conference and that
conference starting off from
the Vicar sessions in Lowry
when nobody
knew how to wear their pulpit properly.
You know?
That it should be a sign for everybody,
a proof of
manifested. We don't even have to look in
the history, but it's a proof of Allah
that the miracles of the and miracles of
the ODR
That this thing happened, where was this Masjidul
Uda in those days?
Who would have thought it was possible?
Was it something that you did yourself? Is
it something that some you can point somebody
who did this and Allah did all of
these things that it works inshaAllah.
So, let's redouble our commitment to these things.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Subhanahu wa ta'ala. Subhanahu
wa ta'ala.