Hamzah Wald Maqbul – Ribt MLK Bayn 01152017
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AI: Transcript ©
We're here, those few of us that brave
the
cold and snow,
on Martin Luther King Day 2018,
in Rebat.
This is not like a normal thing. I
don't know. At least on this side of
town, massages don't usually have, like, a Martin
Luther King Day event.
And,
I think that's
unfortunate.
And those of you who know me,
know that this is not an attempt to
somehow,
do some sort of fake integration into a
system that was neither built by us nor
for us,
nor is it, an event at some sort
of political appeasement.
There are better ways of doing,
something like that than have
talk about Martin Luther King Day.
The idea is this is that Martin Luther
King Day isn't just about Martin Luther King.
It's a remembrance
in this country
that is named after a person who,
is just one of many people
that reminded this poem about
certain realities and certain facts that many people
find inconvenient regarding its history.
And that has to do with the idea
that
from its very inception,
from its very founding document,
there was a,
an unfairness and injustice that happened
to
those people who were brought
in servitude to this country
against their will,
and in chains,
in a very violent process,
that those people were first stripped from their
homes and brought and forced to perform labor
for people that they didn't know.
And,
secondly,
the law enshrined their
subservient status
to the ridiculous point where
they were counted as 3 fifths of a
human being for the purposes of,
of,
of elections
and probably other matters in the law.
And it's very interesting, Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala,
one of his sifat is that he is
al Haq.
He is the ultimate truth and ultimate reality.
And this is something that tajalli of Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala Sifa that the truth carries
with it wherever it goes,
that it has a power to overwhelm people,
despite any material odds or material,
any sort of material indications.
So there was no point in this country
in which slave rebellion
broke out that was so powerful that it
could have forced the the system to heal.
There were slave rebellions,
Harper's Ferry, Nat Turner,
John Brown.
These people
at the time were probably not very well
respected in this country,
but retroactively
somebody who has the benefit of being removed
from that context can see something heroic in
there,
in their their plights and in their struggles
and in their,
the actions that they took so long
ago. But the fact of the matter is
all of them were brought to heal very
quickly.
None of them none of them
actually threatened anything in the system.
And the same thing has to do the
same thing is true with
regards to the civil rights amendment and Jim
Crow in this country, that
the institution of segregation, which was predicated on
the concept of separate but equal,
itself was a lie. Everybody knew that separate
wasn't equal,
and,
everybody knew that this was a way of
perpetuating
the political,
social, and economic
depression of,
colored people in this country.
And
that also didn't change ever because of,
a,
any political,
economic, or military might,
that the oppressed people
possessed,
in this country that forced the the the
dominant system or the the the the patronizing
franchise class in this country
in order to yield them some sort of
concession.
The fact of the matter is that Allah,
his sifa when it comes on the heart
of a person,
a person is overwhelmed,
and they have no choice except for to
accept it. So when you see people in,
in Selma, Alabama marching and dogs are being
sicked on them, and,
you see them getting beaten by by police
and
by other,
kind of, like, quasi,
quasi, like, militia type people who have an
interest in perpetuating the the the the Zoom
system that kept them down. Once that comes
out and the majority of the people see
it, they can't stomach it.
And this is not a a a particular,
beauty or a particular,
positive
attribute of America or of Americans. This is
every human being is like that.
There are some people who have enough
evil inside of their heart that they can
do things
they can do things that are unspeakable and
commit zoon
and submit their heart to the path of
shaitan to the the point that they justify
these things to themselves and they perpetuate these
things to themselves.
But once they come to light, there's no
calm of this world, no matter how corrupt
it is, that will stomach things like
that. And, it's the follow-up of Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala
that he created this dunya as a test
for people. This dunya in this world
is a,
a place of
action without consequence,
and, the akhirah is a place of consequence
without action
that
he still threw us a crumb and gave
us some sort of tasali and some sort
of
rec some consolation in this world.
That Zoom cannot last forever.
That there's no firah Firaun that will be
in power and that is so strong
that Allah
will break the hearts of the believers by
showing them that this person is never going
to be unseated from his throne.
Difficulties are difficult,
and they last for a long time and
they require a lot of sabr.
Every now and then, Allah Ta'ala will take
a fir'awn and drown him in the sea,
just to bring coolness to the hearts of
the believers that that that he's he's in
charge, that these people are not going to
be able to get away with this, nonsense
forever. And this system this type of system
cannot perpetuate itself forever.
So here we are,
Many of us who are probably going to
listen to this, talk
whether in person or from somewhere else, may
end up becoming or may end up being
the progeny,
of of immigrants from other countries, if not
immigrants themselves.
So they ask, what is my place in
the, you know, in in America? I only
came here to make money, or my father
only came here to make money. We weren't
even here when the march on Washington happened.
We had nothing to do with Jim Crow.
We had nothing to do. We had sure
as heck had nothing to do with slavery.
And, you
know, you know, we also have to struggle
as well,
and we also, you know, face discrimination and
racism and what whatnot as well. So why
is this something that we should, you know,
take as our own problem? Do we have
other problems that are more important to worry
about? And I'll just saying things like that
is not really, like, popular now. It's not
gonna make you friends. It's, like, it's gonna
stigmatize you because it's just it's, like, not
cool to say things like that. But undoubtedly,
there are many people who think that inside
of their hearts.
And the idea is this is first of
all,
whoever we are in this country, we've all
benefited materially
and socially from the from the and the
theft from other people.
All of us, including everyone,
not exempting anyone whatsoever.
So, okay, Moshe. There's no, white folks in
the room. Well, okay. They're not the only
ones. The ones who immigrated to this country
came to a country that has, like, magnificent
infrastructure and open land, cheap land, cheap
resources, water, all of these things, cheap gas.
And, you know, cheap gas is something that
black people benefit from just as much as
anyone else does, as much as they see
people and white people and whatever do.
The land which belong to,
the Native American population,
who was almost decimated just by the smallpox
that that that was brought from the old
world.
That land was taken by force. And one
of the things I think people forget sometimes
is that,
most African Americans in the United States of
America are somewhere between a quarter and 8th
Native American in their descent as well. This
is this is something that that I've anecdotally
noticed from most people upon asking or talking
to somebody, they'll name some sort of,
Native American tribe that they have some sort
of ancestry from as well as do many
people who are quote, unquote white people. This
is a gripe of mine. Race is fake.
There's no such thing as race.
In Islam, there's
a recognition of lineage.
Lineage Lineage is who your fathers, you know,
who your fathers were. Right? So you can
only have one lineage in that sense.
But race is how that lineage
appears on a person
in the way that they look in front
of other people.
So one person may look white and the
other person may look black, and they may
be like father and son.
And that's something that's completely arbitrary.
And also there are many there are many
people who would,
we who we would,
say are, like, phenotypically
display as, quote, unquote, white people, but they
have they have the they have
the lineage of other people inside of them
rather than just the lineage of pure Europeans.
And so one of the things that, I
find particularly evil about racism and the concept
of race in America is all it is
is a completely
arbitrary,
arbitrary tool that is used in order to
separate people. And divide and conquer is not
something that was invented by,
invented by,
any nation of the earth that that's there
right now.
Rather,
we even find in the Quran itself the
attribution of the strategy of divide and conquer
to who?
That that Fir'aun exalted himself in the earth,
and he divided people up into different groups,
and he played them off
make
weak and sap the the power and the
strength of another one.
Make weak and sap the the power and
the strength of another one. And so there
is no such thing as a master race.
All it is is there are evil people
that are sitting on the top of a
system, and they tell one group of idiots
that you're better than the other one. So
they they do the the the the evil
work on the behalf
of the other ones. And so yawmulqiama, when
people show up and they have to pay
the bill for somebody else's enjoyment,
they'll feel like a double idiot. Why? Because
a, they they they violated the law of
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in this world, and
b, they didn't even get the benefit. They
were procuring benefit for somebody else.
And every all along, someone told them that
this is for, you know, this is for
the quote, unquote, right race. I mean, even
if you look at what it what is
the white race in this country, the
the bar is completely shifted, and it keeps
shifting
in order to adjust with whatever demographic trends
that are there. So now that there's more
brown skinned people in this country,
all of a sudden, Italians and,
Irish people and all of these, you know,
people from, like, Eastern Europe and from Spain
who are not people who are part of
the enfranchised class in this country in the
past, all of a sudden, all of these
people are,
now going to these kinda, like, weird, like,
Nazi or, like, Klan rallies. I don't like
the use you know, I don't like the
the the usage of the word white nationalist
because white is not even something that has
any sort of
objective definition. It's definitely not a a nation.
You know? Like, people say nation of Islam,
and it's neither a nation nor does it
have anything to do with Islam.
So, but, like, you know, all of these
kind of Nazi racist kind of rallies and
things like that, you see people showing up
there that just a generation ago, the rally
was actually against them.
And so it's it's a type of stupidity.
So a person can choose which side they
want to be on. And, somebody who is,
somebody who is, like, very, very much into
their Islam and sees everything,
through the lens of their Islam, which should
be all of us,
they may ask the question,
Sheikh, what is this how is this relevant
to us? The muslims only have 2 Eids
in the year.
And then the the 3rd Eid is the
Jumuah.
Why is Martin Luther King Day an an
occasion to have a ban in in the?
And the reason for that is very simple,
that
an incident happened in the Syria that many
people will be familiar with,
known as the Heilfulfudun,
that a man came to Makkumukarama,
and he got he got ripped off
or
or violated somehow by a a Meccan of
noble birth and high status. So if you
get into a dispute in Jahiliyyah,
you don't go and sue somebody in court.
There is no court.
What happens? You call your tribe, they call
their tribe, and then the entire thing is
it gets on the verge of going nuclear,
and either they all duke it out, fight
it out, and tell everyone's dead, or,
you know, the elders of both tribes will
try to negotiate some sort of settlement, and
they'll look what happened and see what happened.
So now a man who gets violated has
no tribal protection,
and, he's violated by,
he's violated by somebody who has great tribal
protection.
And so the person who is violated, he
calls out in the
Makkumukarama
asking the people, like, what's what's wrong with
you? Just because just because I'm not from
a certain tribe, is it okay for you
that that I get ripped off and I
get violated and I get hurt and I
get taken advantage of and nobody is there
to help me? And the good people of
of Makamu Karama, even in the days of
Jahiliyah, they gathered together and they swore an
oath,
which was known as the Hilful Fudul, the
oath of of the virtuous.
That in the future, if anything like this
ever happens again, that we swear we swear
an oath that we will come and back
the man who's right,
rather than backing the man who's from our
tribe.
That we'll come together and back the man
who is right, rather than backing the person
for who's from our tribe.
And decades later, he actually took the he
was part of the before
the revelation of Iqra. And decades later, in
Madina Munawara, after having made Hijra, all
of this stuff, he said that I took
such an oath with these people in,
in in Makkamukarama.
Had I been called to,
to make good on that oath, that someone
invoked that oath even to this day. Had
I been called to make good on that
oath, I would have done so.
Meaning what?
That there are certain things that are right
and wrong issues. Even if somebody is not
from your deenah. Martin Luther King, you know,
he wasn't he was a lot of things,
but he wasn't a Muslim.
Right? What happens to him in the Akhirah?
That's not that's not our business. Allah judges
people and and whatever. Ostensibly, he died on
Kufr, and he's not he's not one of
us. We don't pray his or
read dua for him or anything like that.
But a couple of things. First of all,
he wasn't alone, and there were many Muslims
that that were also,
participants in the civil rights, movement. And on
top of that, many of the people who
were who were
who were being oppressed
by that, they're the descendants of Muslims. And
on top of that, even if neither of
those issues were true, still it's wrong.
So the idea is this is that despite
Martin Luther King not being a Muslim
and even even,
despite the fact that the you know, to
the point, the fact that those people are
descendants of Muslims and there were Muslims amongst
them, in some in some fashion, that's still
irrelevant.
Why? Because what's wrong is wrong.
And the guilt and the burden on top
of it is double on us. Why?
Because we actually benefited from the exploitation of
those people.
And, somebody may say, well, that was a
long time ago.
We still benefit from the exploitation of those
people. The slave labor
that literally built buildings in in the United
States capital and in the south and in
and
and that that that that was connected with
the same economic system that the north was
connected with.
Why is it that you see, like, an
exodus of people from the south,
to the north,
where the laws weren't as overtly racist, but
still people will then take economic advantage of
those people fleeing from their homes. They're refugees,
but within the country
to the north,
and how
how that then will provide,
provide labor and,
you know, different types of things for,
people to take advantage of. People are put
in a vulnerable
situation
and taken advantage of. You know, issues like
look at what happened what's happening in the
major cities in the north. Right? Industrial cities
in the north. Look what happened in Detroit.
Detroit is right now it's like in a
miserable condition,
And it's been in a miserable condition for
a while,
and it's,
it's, quote, unquote, getting better because people are
buying out blocks of,
places where traditionally African Americans live, and they're
gentrifying them and throwing them out.
And what happened in
Chicago itself?
There's an election
who ran against Rahm Emanuel, Chuy Garcia. Right?
And what did what did, like, the bankers
say? They said, don't elect Trudy Garcia. Otherwise,
we're gonna turn Chicago into a Detroit.
What does that mean?
Why is it you can't find a grocery
store in the hood? The civil rights amendment
has been passed a long time ago. But
if nobody loads you money to buy build
a grocery store, then you're not gonna have
a grocery store. What does that mean for
that neighborhood?
There's a lot of stuff still going on.
Right? What is this whole police brutality
movement, Black Lives Matter, all these different individuals
that are that are basically blatantly killed
in video
right in front of your eyes.
The most ridiculous videos of which literally people
have their hands up and
are, like, linked prostrate on the floor. I've
seen more than one video like that where
a man has been shot linked prostrate on
the floor in a way that's even more
submissive than sajdah itself.
And and they're still shot and there's still
no no,
no conviction happens, things like that. These should
bother us.
These are issues that someone might say, well,
it's not my fault, and I'm trying to,
like, live my life and blah blah blah
and the other thing. These things should bother
us. They should be something that we, do
something more about than just
share a Facebook post or on you know,
put something up on Twitter.
We should actually have this as part of
addressing these issues as part of our,
agenda
as practicing Islam in this country. Not because
we want everyone to convert to Islam, and
this is gonna be good dawah.
Not
because
of
that.
You
don't guide who who you want, rather Allah
guides whoever He wills, and He has more
knowledge about who He guides.
He has more knowledge about where He puts
in places His guidance. It's not because of
that. Why? It's because it's the right thing
to
do. It's because it's the what? It's the
right thing to do.
In such a way, we made you the
the the the balanced,
the balanced nation
so that your job is to bear witness,
over mankind
and,
and the Rasul sallallahu alaihi wa sallam bears
witness to you. The tafsirah of this is
what?
That you are the ones who are charged
with speaking the Haqq and saying what's right
and commanding what is right and forbidding what
is wrong to the people.
If you do so, the fact that wrong
happens won't harm you in this world or
in the hereafter.
Right? This is a a a a a
a statement of the Quran
that Allah
says to the people who
believe that you're responsible for yourselves,
and if you're on the path of guidance,
the people who go astray,
they cannot harm you.
And Saidna Abu Bakr Siddiq in
Khutba once he mentioned this, that people have
understood this statement the wrong way.
They think it means what? Just take care
of yourself and don't worry about what happens
with other people. This is not the meaning
of it. Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, Abu
Bakr Siddiq says, Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam actually
said, if you see the people that one
day comes that they stop commanding to that
which is right and forbidding that which is
evil,
You can say goodbye to them. There's no
in them. It's as if they're dead.
The good has completely left them. The meaning
of this is what? That you say the
you you command to that which is right
and you forbid to that which is evil.
And people think that that has to do
with what? Like not eating pork and not
drinking alcohol and and that's it.
That's not it. There's a lot more than
that.
Some people then go the other extreme that
they pick things that are differences of opinion
that I'm gonna command to that which is
right and forbid that which is evil and,
like, you know, cast out anyone who misses
the 2 rakas of of nafil after salatulmagrib.
That's not the proper application of it as
well either because that's an issue of that's
not of halal and haram, so it's secondary.
You should remind people gently,
but of the bandwidth of your your your,
service to society, it should take a very
small percentage. It shouldn't be something that takes
up, like, you know, a third or a
half or a majority of your time.
Means what? It means that keep doing what's
right.
Keep doing what's right. And
if the people don't listen to you, they
still won't be able to harm you as
long as you keep commanding the right and
forbidding that which is evil.
Abu Bakr Siddiq his own,
tafsirah of this. Imam Ghazali
he mentions
this in his Ihya.
That what? Keep telling the people what's right
and keep forbidding them from what's wrong
and keep practicing it.
Means what?
Keep practicing it yourself.
Keep practicing what's right yourself even if nobody
listens and even if nobody practices it with
you.
If they don't listen to you, if you're
the only one saying the haqq,
they won't be able to harm you neither
in this world nor will they be able
to harm you in the hereafter.
This is a very important principle.
This is why it is important for Muslims
to worry about civil rights and worry about
the poor and worry about, you know, who,
who's being trampled on and worry about who
has no voice to speak up and protect
themselves, worry about people getting shot and killed
and whatnot. I mean, look. I volunteered with
the police department as well. I volunteered for
a year with the police department. I used
to have a uniform. I used to have
a badge. It's probably still sitting there in
in Blaine, Washington.
I've gone on a drug bust before. I've
gone on traffic stops. It's true. Sometimes cops
say you someone pulls a person over and
the cop is, like, relaxed
with the guy and then khaz, they'll get
blown away. You'll see videos of those things.
They happen again and again and again and
again. Right? But on the flip side,
right, everything has an extreme.
Fine. We don't just cuss out every police
officer. If your house gets robbed or some
someone stole steals something from you, you're gonna
call cops as well. Right?
So it doesn't, you know, it doesn't give
anyone license to say every every one of
them is, like, horrible or every one of
them is,
evil or racist or whatever. That's not true.
I even saw in the our own police
department. There are people that are different. I
could so a couple of the guys, I
could see them doing something stupid like the
things I've seen on on TV.
And then there are some of them, also,
I know that they would never do that.
I've seen from them the the the amount
of,
sacrifice and extending themselves, going out of the
way above and beyond the call of duty
in order to help people.
The idea is what? Is that that we
should be people who are shohada bil kist.
You with justice, you bear witness to what's
going on in society.
And if it means that you have to
show up to a rally, or if it
means you have to vote for someone or
for something, or if it means that you
have to,
you know, pay money, a donation to,
you know, somebody's, you know, for their hospital
bill or for their funeral or for their,
you know,
reelection campaign or for whatever other things in
order to affect something better in your life,
we should do that.
And if it means that you have to
speak up and talk to talk to people
about about how Muslims can can get involved
in those things, we should do that.
If nothing else, at least we should speak
about it with one another. Once we stop
speaking about these things, then they'll die. One
person cannot change the entire world.
So that's how what part of
is what?
Otherwise, this idea that we have,
that many of us have, and it's it
pervades whatever race we may be because, masha'Allah
by Allah's father, this ummah is made up
of all of the different nations of the
earth.
This idea that we have, that one day
we will be happy if we have money
and if we're accepted by those same by
those same
and the same people of
We look up to them. We wanna be
part of their system. We wanna dress like
them. We wanna act like them. We wanna
speak like them. We want to,
look like them. Everything we want, we wanna
identify. We dream about them accepting us one
day.
And I tell you, the person who is
accepted by a chabis is himself chabis.
The one who's accepted by the filthy, that
person is themselves filthy.
The person who acts like and looks like
khabis, that person is themselves khabis.
Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said, what? The
one who goes out of his way in
order to resemble a people, that person will
be one of them.
It's
fine.
It's fine.
If people,
look at you and say you're different, there's
nothing wrong with that.
It's fine. If you speak speak differently than
other people, that's fine. If you eat differently
than people, it's fine.
Don't dream they dream about acceptance with other
people.
Have your own dream of what success looks
like.
Rasulullah salallahu alayhi wa sallam,
he on the day of the Fath, when
he entered into Makkah Mukarramah,
there are 33
Jahili people when they saw Sayidna Bilal
climb to the top of the Kaaba in
order to give the Adhan to quiet the
ruckus that occurred after Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam
shattered the idols of the mushrikeen.
One of them said, look at this,
this black crow,
ascending on top of the Kaaba.
I'm glad that my father died before before
having to see this this,
this site in front of him. Abu Sufyan
overheard them saying that,
and, he he he said, I don't I
don't agree or participate in anything you're saying
right now.
And through Waheed Allah
informed the messenger of Allah of
this thing that was said. And so the
salallahu alaihi wa sallam, he said something at
that at that point in front of everybody.
In
the in the Haram of Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala.
What did he say?
He said Allah
has that has through the deen.
Allah has what?
He's unloaded or unloaded from you the burden
of Jahiliya.
You don't have to worry anymore who's from
Pakistan, who's from India, who's from Africa, who's
from Asia, who's white, who's black. You don't
have to worry about any of that stuff
anymore.
It was stupid and irrelevant. It was a
stone that everyone was carrying around with them
that served no function whatsoever. It's no longer
on your back anymore. Don't worry about it.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. And the interesting thing
is
that which is a term generally
used for for the deen of the of
of idol worship before the,
Islam came.
Here is specifically referring to the idea of
somebody,
somebody
as being low or ill of another man
because of his lineage or his descent or
because of his race. And Jahilia means what?
Ignorance.
He he he's gotten rid of the burden
of
with
and if a person didn't get the message
the first time,
Rasulullah Sallallahu alaihi wa sallam explains what the
what the burden of jahiliyah is. What? They
should boast boast to one another about who
your fathers are.
You're either a believer,
who is,
who's dutiful and and his punctual and religious
and fulfilling his duties to other people
and to
Allah God fearing person.
Or you're what? You're a person who doesn't
care, does whatever he wants to, and that
person will end up in eternal wretchedness on
the day of judgment.
All of you are what? All of you
are from
From from dirt, from the the dirt of
the earth. That's what all of you were
made from.
Adam, all of you are from Adam and
Adam was made from He was made from
the dirt of the earth.
Said
it, if another man said it, we would
we would object that saying such a thing
about Adam
is disrespectful.
But
said it, and on occasion, he used to
say things that that sound harsh. Why in
order to
convey a meaning that is necessary to convey
because it's part of the meanings of part
of the meanings of revelation.
So
it's a a a a beautiful bait, or
a few beautiful
set of a set of verses of poetry
that he said on this issue,
which ties in together very, very clearly and
very beautifully why this is relevant in our
Madars and in the and the and the
masajid that these things should be mentioned.
He's the from the Khulasta, from the most
noble bloodline of Banu Adam.
He's a Hashimi. He's the closest one in
relation to the messenger of Allah Both both
in lineage,
The entire
when Allah gave the command to
warn your your closest of your family members,
your relatives.
And Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam gave dawah to
Bani Hashim.
And he asked who's with me?
Said N Ali radiAllahu ta'alaan, who is a
child of 9 years old, he stood up
and I said, I'm with you. And Abu
Lahab laughed at him.
Well, guess what?
The joke's on Abu Lahab.
He is the one who has the most
noble of lineage.
If it was a matter of
if it was a matter of some rabble
rouser, somebody who just has hasad or is
jealous about about them not being born into
a particular family or not being given something
in life by random chance,
right, like beauty and good health and all
these things are, it's not like you did
anything to earn them,
Then one might say that they're just being
a malcontent.
But who is it, Sayna Ali Radiallahu Ta'ala,
on whom?
His progeny are the progeny of the Rasul
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam through Sayna Fatima radiAllahu ta'ala
Anhu.
He said that so what? He's the one
who has the highest the the highest lineage
and the most,
right. If anyone had any right to boast
about
a person's lineage or their race, he's the
one who had it. There's no Arab afterward
who's going to be able to say that
they have
a superiority
lineage over him, radiAllahu
alaihi salaam.
He said that every every human being
just look at them.
They're all the same to one another.
And this is very interesting because the word
describes,
describes suitability for one another. One of the
meanings is what? For a person to be,
of kafaa is what?
That there it's a suitable match between them
to get married with one another. So anyone
who's gone to somebody's
house and proposed marriage and then got the
door shut in their face for not being
good enough, what does Sayna Ali says?
Just look at them. They all look the
same. They're for one another. Each one of
them is suitable. They all carry the same,
status as one another.
All of them, their father is Adam and
all of their mother is Hawa alayhim al
Salam.
If any of them had a lineage that
they should boast about,
then it's
Then it's what? Dirt and water.
Someone said, I'm the son of so and
so. I'm the son of so and so.
Everybody, if you wanna boast about your lineage,
then your forefathers are dirt and water.
He said,
that,
that there's no virtue for anyone over anyone
else except for
what? Except for a knowledge.
Because the people of knowledge are
the ones that those who wish
to be good and to seek guidance and
do something better with their life, they're the
ones Allah that have placed in his creation
in order to facilitate that process and help
them along that way.
So what?
What's the opposite of
what's the opposite of of being like a
bigot and a racist?
To have knowledge.
The person who hate racism and bigotry the
most is what?
And if you see someone even within this
ummah that doesn't give it a big deal,
even if they have a title and a
turban and a beard and all of this
other
stuff, you know that that person in that
one issue, they're closer to Jahilia than they
are to Islam.
And
Said Ali
continues. He says,
that that he does which is beautiful, that
he does with Ihsan.
And you can see the beauty of a
man's good work when you see that person.
And what counts against
every man is the thing that they're ignorant
of. Some people say ignorance is bliss. That's
the of Kufr.
Everything you don't know, everything you're ignorant of,
counts against you.
Automatic fail without even having to take the
test. You are automatically failed.
Against every man is the thing that they
are ignorant of.
That the,
the the the ignoramuses
always were the enemies of the people of
knowledge.
Abu Jahl,
Abu Lahab, these people, Al Walid ibn Muhirah,
Umayyah,
all of these people,
they're what?
They're always they're they're people of ignorance. Of
course, they're gonna be the enemies of the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
If you have knowledge, the ignorant will always
fight you, they will always oppose you.
That's why our salaf,
they never considered it a good sign that
a man has, is universally accepted and loved
by everybody.
Because if you speak the Haqq and you
speak the truth,
necessarily
necessarily
the people who have jahl inside of their
heart, they'll hate you for it.
They'll necessarily
hate you for it. Some of those people
may even be people of Islam,
and we cannot comment on what's in some
someone's heart. Just like it's, wrong to walk
around in the street and say, this person
is going to *, that person is going
to *. How do you know? You don't
know what a person's khatima is going to
be like.
Just like that, not everybody who,
keeps the the the the outward,
hook them of the law.
Can we know for sure that this person
what state are they going to pass in
this world, or what state do they hide
inside of their heart?
And we have hushnathan for every Muslim. Every
person who carries the legal hookah of Islam,
we have hushnathan, but there's a difference between
Harshnathan and Yateen. There's a difference between having
a good opinion of a person and being
absolutely certain.
Good opinion is what? You see somebody and
you say this person is not a thief.
That's a good opinion.
Is what? I would trust my credit card
with
them. It's okay. You can think this man
is not a thief, but like, you know,
hey. Can can I borrow your credit card?
You know, I I I'd rather not.
The two things are not are not,
mutually exclusive. They're different things.
So there will be people from this ummah.
Also, this Jahiliyyah will completely make them hate
a person for what? Speaking the truth and
telling the truth.
Tell me, if we want to get together
every week and meet in this ri'baat, which
one do we wanna be?
Do we wanna be from the people of
Elmer, do we wanna peep be be for
the people of Jahiliyah?
Literally, the nazm of Sayna Ali what
is it?
It starts talking about how every human being
is the same
when it comes to their physical nature.
The only difference between them is something that's
spiritual.
The person who denies spirituality,
to them, human being is either one type
of monkey or another type of monkey.
A person who is racist like that, that
person is what? That person is a step
closer to Kufr. This is something, you know,
that this is some of the racist people.
Oh, look.
These whatever people from whatever continent and countries
they're from, they're like a bunch of monkeys.
They'll they'll literally say that. They'll they'll they'll
they'll mock one another about it and say,
look. You know what? Yeah. They're a monkey.
You're the same monkey. You know that? You're
just a different color monkey. You're from the
same jins as they they are.
You don't need to be a a faqih
in order to know that.
A black person and a white person, they
mate. They'll still have offspring. So by the
biological definition, you're the same species. So call
another man a monkey, you're just a different
color monkey.
You're a different type of you're you the
other Allah in in Israel,
the sahaba radiAllahu anhu, the
oliya I kiram, the oliya I kiram, they
called people in order to what? Not worry
about the physical reality on the outside,
but to better the spiritual reality on the
inside because the spiritual reality
is more profound
than the physical matter. The physical matter of
your body will die and disintegrate one day.
Your will live forever.
And on the flip side, the Johala or
what, the people no. No. No. No. No.
I wanted this monkey thing really captures my
imagination. I'm gonna kinda focus on this.
And, this is what I'm going to, this
is what I'm gonna spend my life thinking
about, talking about. Notice the beginning of it
has to do with what? Saying that everybody
physically, they're the same anyway.
The only difference is a spiritual difference.
And if you get that, you're a good
person.
And if you get that, you'll be preoccupied
with filling your heart and your mind with
the knowledge of revelation and with the knowledge
of what's good and what's what's right.
If you don't get that, you're a Jahil.
If you don't get that, you're an ignoramus,
and it's to be expected that you will
be an enemy for every person who has
hope inside of their heart and every enemy
who has light inside of their heart.
So this Martin Luther King Day, masha'Allah,
we, respect the fact that there are people,
even if they weren't Muslims,
that struggle for that which is right, even
though they didn't come and conform
outwardly to the message that was brought by
Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam.
Even though they weren't able to do that,
Allah didn't give them the tawfiq to do
that. But at least in some partial sense,
they understood what?
That life is more about, you know,
making picking which group of monkeys you're a
part of and fighting with each other based
on that.
That's a good thing. That's a positive development.
Whenever someone makes that dawah, that's our dawah.
And the wisdom is a lost property of
the believer. If you lose something and then
you find it, you have the right to
take it. It's yours. It didn't belong to
somebody else. It's just through adverse circumstance you
found it somewhere else. It didn't belong to
them. It belonged to what? It belonged to
us.
So this is something that that that that
we we see ourselves as a part of.
We should mention this. Again, Martin Luther King
Day, unlike what, you know, whatever Mike Pence
and these people will try to make it
into. It's not about the person of Martin
Luther King.
He was one man. He gave sacrifice with
his life. He gave Azimashan sacrifice,
for for what he believed in. But it's
not just him. It's it's millions of people
who are with him,
and many of whom were Muslims themselves. If
you look on the march on Washington,
right, Malcolm x, Shaheed,
he he was there on the platform with
him as well.
Allah knows best, you know, who whose impact
was more.
This is a parting shot. This is the
same thing that happened to us. They see
people as well. Right?
Our forefathers, the ulama, they fought the British.
And when the British it was no longer
tenable for them to keep rule, what did
they say? They say, here, here's the Pakistan
here's Pakistan. We'll give it to all the
Muslims that liked us.
One set of people make the sacrifices, another
set of people benefit afterward. That's fine. That's
like an old part of the playbook. We're
not, like, surprised by any of
that. We're not surprised by any of those
things. Don't surprise us in any way, shape,
or form.
But the idea is what? The name is
just like a a a a a a
figure head that's a placeholder. We don't need
to say anything bad about Martin Luther King
either.
But we say that what we recognize that
it's not just him.
It was generations of people, generations of people.
If, you know, people those people, those slaves
were brought to this country, many of whom
were were were were Muslims. It was their
duas. It was their hard work.
For those people that have nothing that they
come in shackles in their being,
lashed, and they're beaten beaten and they're being
killed like animals. For them just to survive
itself is a great contribution to the civil
rights movement.
Why? Because it proves we're human being, we
will still go on despite all the odds
being
stacked against us. So we pray to Allah,
anybody who is or was,
or Muslim whether they're alive or dead that
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala take vengeance for them,
for the zulum that was done to them,
to anybody who is still arrogant and doesn't
wish to accept the fact that they did
wrong in this world and in the hereafter.
And that Allah
give a hiday to our qaum and guidance
to our qaum that they
leave behind,
this need to,
oppress and dominate one another, that they should
understand that when we succeed, we'll succeed together,
and and if we fail, we'll all fail
over our qawm and being able to do
something useful and something meaningful to help,
Allah
absolve us from the the benefit that we
took that was
also stolen from people and that was taken
from the backs, whether it's from the backs
of slave labor or from the land of
and the resources that the native Americans,
used it used
before.
People came from the old world,
to this hemisphere
or whether it's the other poor people in
other, countries that whose oil and natural resources
are being stolen or the small children that
make our sneakers and our soccer balls and
whatever other things that we,
articles that we use to enjoy our life.
Allah
forgive us and give us the tawfiht of
making kafarah for for for having benefited from
all of those things as well. There's a
lot to do more than just listening to
a band.
And this is one of the reasons I
feel very,
honored and very
humbled by being able to work with Islamic
Relief is that there are
projects in this country
that, Muslims do do in order to uplift
and help people who who are in need.
Many of whom,
in fact, almost all of whom are people
who have the deck stacked against them from
day 1 anyway.
You know, people make bad decisions.
Sometimes that's just purely because there was nobody
who taught them how to make good decisions.
This is Chicago. There are, like, 35 year
old grown men in the city
that don't have driver's licenses, don't have bank
accounts, don't. Why is that? Is it just
because they're stupid and they don't wanna whatever?
How come they didn't go to driver's ed?
Because they didn't have a driver's
ed in their school, and they didn't go
to the school in the 1st place because
they didn't have this or that or the
other thing. There's a lot of I mean,
that exists.
So those people, you can look down on
them and say, well, my father came from,
you know, such and such country with, like,
whatever, $50 in his pocket and, you know,
he made himself successful. Well, your father knew
what his father's name was, didn't he?
You're you know, our forefathers didn't have to
go through, like, whatever
several centuries of being
outlawed from reading and writing
that you literally, they had their name stolen
from them. They don't even know who they're
who who they are, where they came from.
Those things make a difference. They're even more
important than they're even more important than what?
They're more important than than money.
If you read history, many a king
is what is the son of a king
whose father
lost the entire kingdom and that person
single handedly at some point being alone went
from being alone to what? Reconquering the kingdom
of his father. This is something happens happens
again and again.
Akbar, the Mughal emperor, his father,
Humayun, had completely,
completely
blown off
his father's,
establishing of the Mughal empire. He defeated Iran
and basically be a to the to the,
Sasanian,
Iranian court.
And he came back and,
died in India with a very small piece
of his father's empire. Akbar will
will reestablish it and make it again. What?
He had nothing, but he knew who his
father was. His father was a king.
Imagine those people, they literally why did they
want their them why did they want them
not to know what the names of their
fathers were?
Because that's how they can convince them that
you're not you're not a human being, you're
an animal, just accept it.
Because their fathers were also noble people, their
fathers were also kings, their fathers were also
scholars in ulama, their fathers were also upright
and decent people. They're human beings.
They're khalafa of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala on
this earth, they wanted to make them forget
that. There are people in this country that
they they're successful at making them forget all
of these things.
We owe it to them to give them
some sort of help.
And it breaks my heart. Islamic Relief. Right?
I mean, it's a corporation.
I'll be honest with you. It's a corporation.
We ourselves, our job performance and evaluation is
based on what? It's based on how much
money we can bring in.
Right? Our bosses would be
would be irresponsible if we didn't bring in,
you know, money that justified us being there.
That's fine. So we know what the pain
of this is.
Right? Hafiz Bae, if we raise money for
a project,
in the hood or if we raise money
for a project overseas overseas, who's gonna give
more money?
It's like the difference some in some lessons,
it's like the difference between
$50 and, like like, $30,000.
That's why it's good sometimes to come sit
with the and let them, like, tell you,
you know, what to you know, tell you
what's going on.
I'm the first one who will tell you
we need to send money overseas. Our poor
brothers and sisters in Burma and Palestine, all
these places. They depend on us. They need
our help.
But that doesn't that doesn't mean that we
ignore our our brothers and sisters here as
well.
There are places, not just black people by
the way. Right? There are places in the
south. Those same people you think that people
are going to,
get up and vote for, like, absurd candidates
and, like, you know, have these absurd and
ridiculous,
points of view with regards to history and
with regards to racism and all of that
because they're educated
or because they're doing well, those people, some
of them are the most pathetic people in
this entire country.
They're the ones if you show them a
little bit of kindness, they'll value it more.
Those people some of these people who are
at these clan rallies, there's I see them.
There's more chance that these people are going
to become Muslim than there are sophisticated,
suitable people from the north.
They're simple people. Right? So when a hurricane
or a flood or tornado or whatever hits
their areas,
we also should help them as well.
They're also part of our
home, but it's hard. It's hard because people
don't wanna give to them. They don't see
sympathy to them. They see themselves as a
victim and another person
as, as somebody who, you know, should take
care of themselves or whatever. This is the
generosity of the deen
that that you never should see see yourself
as a victim. You always see yourself as
the one with the upper hand.
The Sahaba radiAllahu anhu, despite their back breaking
poverty, they used to give sadaqa to people.
Even if they only have one date, they'll
give the sadaqa half a date.
They never said no to giving. This is
one of the most powerful things that we
can do,
in order to right what was wrong is
just to help people out around us. It
doesn't even have to do only with money,
you know. It can be like cooking food
and giving giving food to somebody. It can
be encouraging people, sing a good word, giving
someone a shot at work if you're if
you're you're hiring or whatever. It
could be any number of, of things like
that.
But unless you go go forth and and
and and try to do something,
then, you know, the the abstract knowledge itself,
of of some sort of injustice.
Although, we say that knowledge is better than
ignorance,
but,
knowledge without action is like cooking dinner and
then not eating.
You know? You did the work. What's the
point? You may as well enjoy the the
benefit of it now.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala give all of us
so much
tawfiq.