Hamzah Wald Maqbul – The Spiritual Mandate of Navigating Differences Ribt 05282023
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Is fulfilled.
Part of the mandate of these gatherings, which
is to teach give a
teaching about the spiritual path
of the sunnah of the messenger of Allah
It has to do with also dealing with
dealing with
the world around us and dealing with the
as well.
The spirituality.
Why don't you guys come forward and make
room for other people so they don't have
to sit outside. There's I think there's a
few more people this week just because of
guests coming from out of town. So inshallah,
the more people you accommodate, the more,
reward you get, inshallah, for your own sitting
and for accommodating others as well.
Part of the spiritual path also has to
do with dealing with others because dealing with
others properly and well, is itself a greater
a greater driver of a person's spiritual growth
than just taking care of yourself.
You take care of yourself. Why?
Because without a certain minimum amount of care
for yourself,
you're going to end up not helping
yourself or others.
And in that sense, taking care of others
is also a very selfish act. Why?
Because the person who, you know, grabs their
and makes a and says these, you know,
practices all these things we've learned in the
hadith of the
prophet for the rest of their life. Allah
gives them a great maqam.
But we know we know from the sunnah
also the person who facilitates it for a
100 other people, and that person will
functionally do the amount of dhikr without having
to do it with themselves that they wouldn't
have been able to do if they only
did it themselves, if that makes any sense
to a person. So there are certain things
you have to do yourself. No one else
can do them for you. They include the
5 daily prayers, fasting Ramadan, things like that,
taking care of your dependents, etcetera.
But then afterward,
dealing with other people properly is itself a
great driver of,
a person's spiritual growth and progress.
And so that's something that needs to be
talked about as well. So we live in
a society
we live in a society that's not majority
Muslim society.
This is something that in the Masajid al
Anindi,
Manabeer of, you know, this poem and the
big conferences and the big gatherings,
Very few people will openly tell you that
the fakaha
classically did not take a positive view of
people living in Darul Kufr,
living under the hegemony of Allah other than
the law of Allah and His Rasul sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam.
Some of us may have come ourselves voluntarily
to this country. Some of us may not
have may not have. Maybe our parents came
voluntarily. Some of us may not have. Our
parents were brought here against their will
in servitude.
Some of us, you know,
our forefathers were not Muslims. We accepted Islam.
There are a number of
ways, routes, and reasons that we're here. But
first of all, in order to understand
how we're going to
survive in the society,
The foundation is what? Is that, fundamentally, it's
an ideal circumstance.
Does that mean that it's haram, everybody has
to leave today, or that you're never gonna
be a good Muslim or you're never gonna
be successful? Absolutely not. But people have to
just understand what their circumstances. If a person
is born blind,
then they have to deal with it. They
can't ignore that that fact.
So the person will learn. You'll get them
a walking stick. They'll learn how to read
braille. You'll do all of these things and
person can still end up living a functional
and actually fulfilled in a very beautiful life.
But you have to deal with it.
And just like that, there are certain, there
are certain challenges that people have
that are,
physical, some are mental, some are emotional, some
are physiological, some are anatomical, anatomical, some are,
individual, and some are communal. So this is
the first communal challenge that we have, which
is that what we are
we've embraced this intention that we're not just
demographic Muslims.
You understand what I'm saying? We're demographic Muslims,
meaning the those people that they, you know,
they put the hijabi girl up on the
makeup commercial so that you can sell to
them. That's not all our Islam means to
us. There are some people, that's all their
Islam means to them.
Allah
guide us and guide them as well. We're
not here to talk about that.
What are we talking about right now?
Those of us who are in this room,
the hope is that the reason you're here
is that you've not only accepted Islam as
a cultural identifier, as demographic identifier, but it's
actually what you believe in and it's your
way of life, and you've
made the commitment. I wanna be a saliq.
I want to travel this spiritual path to
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
such that the day that I meet him,
that it should be a good day, it
shouldn't be a bad day.
Even after that, there's a number of gradations
of of intentions that a person can have.
But at least we're at that level or
considering
something at that level.
This obviously, it's a problem. It's a problem
because you're living in a society that doesn't
absolutely has no care or concern for this
goal of yours at all.
The people who hold sovereign authority see you
as a taxpayer.
They see you as a consumer.
They see you as an individual with certain,
unalienable
rights.
But those rights may not be the same
that that Allah and his,
you know, envisioned for
you or have granted your given mandate to.
They may give you rights to do that
in the court of Allah and his Rasool
and You don't have those rights. And they
may restrict you from doing certain things that
not only do you have a right to
do those things from Allah and his messenger
but you have a mandate to do them,
and they may
be
perilous.
More than any of that, a human being
is not just a person who thinks, like,
in terms of rules and law. I feel
like sometimes, like, you know, like,
mold these lawyers, they have this thing that
they think about everything, like, in a legalistic
way,
and that's not everything. It's important, but it's
not everything.
And
so
one thing is that rules you. Maybe, you
know, like, you you sound like good lawyers.
If you talk to them anything, whatever it
is, you say, I'm gonna go across the
street and buy a, you know, like, buy
a buy a a bottle of water from
the 711 across the street. They'll tell you
seven reasons why this is gonna, like, completely
destroy you, and I wouldn't do that if
I were you. Scare the the smack out
of you, and you'll be like, oh, man.
You know? Good thing you're here. Otherwise, I
might have gone and bought a bottle of
water and
lost my license and lost this and got
deported and liability for this, that, and the
other thing. There are movies like that as
well. Why? Because you understand the law. You
see what the possibilities are.
But life is more than that.
Even if someone were to say, okay. Look.
There's this first amendment. Why don't you come
and contribute to our taxpayer base?
Why don't you fill our armies? Why don't
you buy stuff from our stores
and from our economy and our malls and
our, you know, online,
websites and things like that, participate in our
society, build our society.
Still,
even if a person accepts that ideal standard,
and maybe some people do get that ideal
standard. Definitely, it's not everybody.
The American dream is, like, not you know,
it's not a good dream for everyone. But
for some people, it is. We're also not
gonna discount that either.
And for most people, it's in the middle.
Obviously,
there's some in it, so there's no point
in just discussing the negativity just for the
sake of discussing the negativity. Also, there's no
point in being ignorant of it. But just
the idea, even if it's working out really
well for you,
that you wake up in the morning and
you're surrounded with
a set of assumptions.
The assumption is what? Your religion is not
important. Don't bring it up. Don't talk
about it. Your Allah and your Rasool sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam are not important. Don't bring
them up and don't talk about them.
That's what you do on your own time.
So you wake up, you get more get
get ready, you go to work, you come
home. That entire process is, like, what, 8
hours, 10 hours a day?
If you have any social contact with those
people, you know, you add on to that,
then whatever news you listen to, whatever,
know, like, portal that you, you know, pay
your taxes through, that you pay your bills
through, whatever place you go shopping, you're not
gonna go to a shopping mall. You're not
gonna walk into a, you know, a a
grocery store and say, I don't go to
a shopping mall. I'm not a VAPID consumer.
You know? Okay. Whatever, like, farmer's market that
you buy your local produce from, like, organic
double triple, you know,
humane certified cruelty free. I don't buy, you
know, anything that cast a shadow, you know,
or whatever, like, level of, like,
conscientious consumerism that
you have. In none of those situations,
are you going to be able to talk
about your deed?
Does it mean anything to you?
And that has an effect on a human
being.
Very few people are, like, psychologically, like, a
like, their their mind is, like, surrounded by
brick wall
that nothing will affect it. In fact, a
human being takes effect from other human beings.
If you're like that brick wall, something is
usually wrong with you. There's some people who
there's nothing wrong with them, but most people
who have that condition,
intransigent intransigence is not usually seen as a
endearing quality in in people.
So you can earn that at the expense
of what? Just being like a normal, like,
a 53 human being that other people are
happy to interact with because you don't make
a very fun, you know, roommate. You don't
make a very fun spouse. You don't make
a very fun parent or or child if
you're that intransigent.
So it's a problem.
Part of the spiritual path is what is
telling a person. People say, well, what are
you saying, Sheikh? Should I, like, leave this
country? Because, you know, when you go to
the when you go to the Muslim world,
the Adan is there 5 times a day.
It's like the
notification of the ancients
that Allah
made this made this
preparation,
this program for you. It's completely organic.
Like, you get a no a notification on
your phone. Right? They've gamified,
like, all of these apps.
So people get likes and retweets and comments
and boost boosts
and promotion and whatever. All of these things.
Right? They've gamified all of these apps and
the person then looks forward to
see those notifications psychologically. Some people become needy
for those notifications. This notification
made before the
before the
usage and the invention of phones and of
the Internet.
They say, Adi ibn Hatem
who the
son of Hatem Abtai
that he said after he took the shahadah,
he never heard the Adhan except for he
felt a longing to go to go and
meet Allah in the prayer.
That notification is not here. You're not gonna
hear it. You're not gonna see it.
People are deaf to it around it as
well. But the idea is that at least
if you're around it, at least if you're
hearing it, it has some effect. At least
there's a possibility that it
of nothing is.
Nothing is nothing. It cannot be something.
So how is it that we have to
make a life for ourself,
in this place?
Every people, they deal with each other through
a social contract.
The social contract of the people of this
country. And, you know, I understand that oftentimes
what happens, especially because of engagement on the
Internet and things like that, there are people
who are living in the Muslim world who
listen to these things and who,
read, you know, articles and talks that that,
articles and talks and books and things like
that that are written from, the United States.
And there's a certain amount of interest in
it as well, and it's fine if a
person wants to read it. Although I myself
find it unhealthy,
how some people daydream about being in this
place
beyond
beyond just a normal healthy amount of interest.
The fact is that the way we have
to negotiate our path through over here is
very different than the way that those people
are going to negotiate their path through. The
social contract that we have with the
the the people around us is very different
than the social contract that people have around
them. So people ask me questions.
Like, for example, I got a question just
yesterday.
Someone says, I work in a school,
and there is
a, a student. I'm a teacher, and there's
a student that identifies as,
a gender other than theirs and says use
the pronouns they, them for me.
Don't say whatever gender the person is was
born with.
Is this permissible or not?
Not in terms of a purely
simple.
Right? I said, well, if you're already gonna
get fired, what's gonna happen? You know? No.
No one's gonna fire me. They're not gonna
be happy with me if I
choose not to, you know, comply, but I'm
also not gonna get fired. It's just something
ambiguous in the middle.
On the face of it,
to say they, them, is not to misgender
a person.
It's just to avoid the the issue of
what their gender is in the first place.
But then a person has to understand that
things are, again, more complicated than that. On
one side, if you don't misgender the person
and you make them happy,
it's actually a sunnah to call people by
the name that they
feel honored by
and to, in general, not be a
a person who is just harsh and abrasive
for no reason.
At the same time, this interaction that's happening
right now is more than just this one
teacher and this one student.
And the
the implications will be more than just that.
Why? Because if things become a custom that
we're not accustomed from before, then afterward, it
becomes law. It
becomes ossified. It becomes,
something that you can't really go back on.
These are issues we have to understand. We
have a we have a a a really
important
need to negotiate these things in our social
contract with the people that we live in
and that we live around.
We don't have this concept in Islam that
other minorities have had in the past, which
is that you live like an urchin. You
live like a leech on the host that
you live amongst. There are people who have
done this, That between us, we don't give
a damn about what happens to the society.
We don't give a damn about everybody else's
house on our street. We don't give a
damn about,
the people around us.
We don't we don't we don't think like
that. At the same time, we're not the
sacrificial lamb that you go guys go ahead
and run over us with the with the
van or with the truck.
And, you know, we're just gonna we're we're
just gonna go back to Allah Ta'ala and,
like, you know, just as long as you
guys are happy. No. We also are obliged
to uphold the dignity of ourselves,
and through that, we uphold the dignity of
Islam as well. Dignity doesn't mean that you
have to be treated special, but it also
doesn't mean that you should
portray what a Muslim is as being somebody
who,
you know, is just, like, a really unimportant
person. That you should at least be an
equal with with the people around you, and
you should at least seek, some sort of
equal treatment.
These issues require some sort of
understanding and some sort of leadership and some
sort of cooperation between people because the social
contract between Muslims and America
cannot be negotiated by 1 Muslim or by
1 American.
America is a sovereign polity.
Whether you like it or not, it's a
sovereign polity.
It has a constitution.
That constitution,
people differ about how to interpret it.
Even people in the same government may differ
how to interpret it. Even the judges
differ how to interpret it. This is why
the court exists in the first place.
Is that what when people have differences on
how to interpret it,
then there needs to be some mechanism to
resolve that interpretation. Otherwise, the constitution could mean,
you know, one thing for,
you know, for a person who is a
literalist. It could mean another thing for a
person who's a traditionalist. It could mean another
thing for a person who wants to reinterpret
it in light of x y z. And
it could be like a parable about, you
know, the warmth of a spring morning to
another person. It doesn't matter. It could mean
anything to anyone. Words don't really mean anything
anymore
to most people. Islam is very you know,
we're very, very, very lucky actually in that
sense that words one of the things you
don't know to say
for is words actually mean things in in
in in Islam, and the Quran has a
word or the parameters of what the words
mean, what they can mean, what they probably
mean, what they might mean. Those are all
very clearly spelled out.
The dictionary of Arabic not only has definition,
but it has Dalila as well. Otherwise, who
cares? I don't worship, Merriam Webster that I
should, like, somehow, like, consider his his definitions
of what a word means, like, somehow sacred
or whatever.
Right? But in
English, that's not the case at all. It's
not the case at all. Words mean whatever
people get together and say they want them
to mean. So how can you have any
sort of, any sort of, like, consistency in
anything?
So you have courts that actually reconcile these,
you know, these these,
these types of conflicts that people have. And
they may actually say something yesterday and then
another thing today and then the third thing
tomorrow. But when they say it, then everybody's
back on the same page.
In the negotiation,
the party that you're negotiating with has some
sort of mechanism of unity.
Albeit, extremely someone can critique it for having
a great number of inefficiencies and deficiencies and
other problems, but it's there.
There's a Muslim community in the United States
of America.
You know, at some point or another, we've
done so much fundraising for people, poor people
in other countries, and refugees in other countries,
and,
humanitarian disasters in other countries. I'm not saying
don't do it. In fact, I'm oftentimes the
one who actually stands up and does it
and encourages people to do it. At some
point or another, we also have to take
care of ourselves. Why? Because if we don't
take care of ourselves, how are we gonna
be able to take care of others in
the future?
We also have to have some sort of
mechanism in order to negotiate any of these
things.
The situation that we have in this country,
however, is
confounded. We as Muslims have in this country
is confounded further. Why? Because
the Sharia is no longer the
the basis on which we
deal with one another.
Our basic beliefs. They're no longer the basis
on which we deal with one another. That's
why you have the 1st Muslim elected to
the house of representatives and the second and
the third and the fourth, and all of
them say the craziest of things. Like, forget
about something that's haram or something's wrong. Like,
they'll say kufr and they'll spout kufr,
and
they don't say anything. Why? Because they can
count on the Muslims to say, oh, this
is a Muslim no matter what it is
that they do or say,
but they can't count on their other constituencies
to back them, their political career to be,
you know, safe. So what will they do?
They'll they'll they'll leverage the thing that they
find safety in in order to get to
the thing that they don't find. This is,
like, very basic. Like, all forget about human
beings. This is how the entire animal kingdom,
you know, seems to operate.
Right? Why is it that,
you know, like, a mole that lives under
the ground for its entire life can't see
very well? It doesn't need to.
It will invest its, like, genetic and its,
metabolic
resources and doing something that it needs to
do. It's the same reason. Like, human beings
can't walk around by echolocation,
except for blind people can learn how to
do it. Why?
Because that's something that can benefit them because
they don't have the the door to site
is close to them. So there are some
humans that can do it. Nobody bothers to
develop that faculty until there's a need to
do so. Why? Because you leverage the thing
you take for granted and you don't.
And, you know, and and you and then
you work on you put your effort on
what the things that that are difficult to
obtain.
Put all of that to decide. You tell
me
if we were to ask the ulama in
America to agree on anything.
This is the same thing religious people will
tell you and the same thing religious people
will tell you except for they'll have a
very different tone. All of them will say,
they don't agree about anything. How the *
are they gonna get anything done?
Irreligious people say, look at all these movies.
They're all uneducated backwards. You know, they're all
users and choosers and abusers, and,
you know, they they do this and they
do that, and they're all selfish, and they're
this and they're that. And they'll, you know,
they'll but,
functionally, what are they saying? So they're not
gonna ever agree on anything to do something.
And then on the flip side, he asked
religious people, they'd be like, you know, it's
differ difficult. You know, this person is gonna
get fired from their job. This person they
said it, but, you know, it's hard. We
should support them, make dua, and blah blah
blah. But, functionally, we all know it's the
same it's the same issue. It's the same
problem.
This is part of your
journey on the spiritual path.
One is that if we're not functional as
human beings,
as social creatures,
the spiritual path is very far fetched. We're
not even gonna,
fulfill the basic tenets of our deen. It's
gonna be a problem.
We're not going to be able to
survive as a community than to throw a
person a person a bone and say, well,
you can be as Muslim as you want
as an individual. This is not how Islam
works. This is not how human beings work.
This is why I wanted to mention this
to you. Those are people who are unfortunate
enough to follow me on social media. I've
seen that there's been kind of a a
fair amount of
a fair amount of noise that, has come
up around
the releasing of a particular document.
I, myself, in
forums in the United States of America amongst
Muslim leaders, like famous imams and famous,
you know, preachers and scholars.
For whatever reason or another,
sometimes I get invited to these things. They're
oftentimes closed doors.
And, you know, what's said is said in
those
gatherings as Amana,
I have no idea. There are people who
actually get invited to these, you know, big
conferences, and they actually have large followings. And
they have, like, teams of people working with
them to put their content out to edit
the video to do all of these things.
And so for whatever reason, they say, well,
why don't you call Hamza?
And he can also give his point of
view because there's a different demographic, obviously, you
know, like,
you know,
full on
a conferency.
He has a particular appeal to certain people,
but then what happens is that those people
at some point or another will interact with
somebody
like you who are here, who are listening
at home. And there's a higher
likelihood that,
that, you know, if the 2 groups don't
see eye to eye with one another, this
sort of social cohesion is not going to
be possible. That's necessary. Because at the end
of the day, look, I'm the first guy
who's gonna tell you if it's, you know,
if it wasn't slaughtered by a Muslim who
held the knife, it's a bismillah Allahu Akbar,
it's haram. If it's slaughtered by a machine,
it's haram. I don't care if you like
it or not, it's haram. I'm gonna die
with this. I'm gonna cherish dying with this
and taking it with me to my grave,
and it's gonna look good in the day
of judgment and the other thing is not.
I'm gonna be the 1st guy who says
that you can't calculate your e I'm gonna
be the 1st guy who says, oh, I
have all these positions that I hold that
for, you know, for which people may like
me or dislike me, but I hold them
very strong. At the end of the day,
however, I'm not that or
even, you know, non Kufar, Kufar,
or even, you know, non Kufr,
Kufr non Kufr opinions of Aqidah
that I would think it's better it's better
for a Muslim to be subjugated
to a person who doesn't even know the
name of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
Or know what's or care what's in the
Quran, or knows them and detest them versus
another person, someone goes to a conference and
like, you know, I don't know, they prayed
Jummah at the wrong time and they eat
the, you know, they eat the wrong chicken.
I disagree with all of the above. Right?
But I, myself, understand there's something that we
have in common, that there's some sort of
some sort of mutual interest that we should
work with one another. At the end of
the day, that person, even our by our
own that we say that they're not going
to the hellfire.
Whoever has even even the the the the
minimal, like, Adam's worth of
faith in their heart. Meaning that they have
so little Islam, even other Muslims don't notice
that they have this that they're they're a
Muslim.
That even there are gonna be many of
those types of people who will be forgiven
on the day of judgment.
So I'm not gonna say, okay. This guy's
eating the wrong chicken, like, you know, like
like, flip him the bird and say, yeah.
Yeah. You you flip me the haram bird,
and I flip you another haram bird back
and screw you, and we're done. You know?
It's gonna be the bush money, it's gonna
be, like, enmity until the day of judgment.
No.
Yeah. I'm not that stupid. So you work
with people on things that you agree with
them about. And the things you disagree, Feel
free to cherish your disagreements
within
reasonable,
you know, parameters. What are the reasonable parameters?
Those things that that are your needs for
for your account that you're gonna give on
the day of judgment and that are beneficial
for
the
Otherwise, there are many people who if you
tell them, if you tell them, hey. You
know, eating,
you know, eating this such and such haram,
thing is haram, then they'll say, oh, screw
you. I'm done with the swan. Right? Okay.
Now what did you do? You pushed the
pushed the the the rock in the wrong
direction.
Right? That's that should be common sense. It
should be a bit common sense. It's not
all that common.
So
in that vein, in Ramadan of this year
and I pushed this, by the way, in
these gatherings.
I don't wanna name names because it's an
an Amana. I pushed it from before. I
said, look. Amongst you is Salafi, amongst you
is modernist, amongst you is a different Med
Hab, amongst you is men and women, amongst
you is all sorts of different, you know,
things that are not demographically or ideologically aligned
with what I'm trying to do or who
I am.
I said, any one of you pick yourself
as an Amir.
Any one of of you pick one of
yourself or some of yourselves to be a
to to to settle the disputes of the
Muslims.
And even if I hate your guts, I'll
sign onto it. Why?
Because some consistency is better than no consistent
consistency as all. This is also the mandate
of of Islam.
And this is one of the reasons I
get so bothered by
the people. They're the most disorderly of people
that I've met in my life. That they
cannot even follow simple instructions of the masjid
the imam inside the masjid.
I'm like, look. Wouldn't would do you think
I'm anti if would I be upset if
tomorrow the, you know, the Muslims got together
and agreed on one sovereign ruler and, like,
whatever? It would solve a lot of our
problems. I do say it wouldn't solve everything.
There's still a lot of problems that can
happen and that did happen traditionally when this
occurred,
but
still nobody's I mean, nobody who has who
has any proper understanding of the deen will
be upset about that.
But the issue is this is that you
are claiming you wanna do something. You haven't
made any preparation for it.
I'm gonna go try I'm gonna try to
walk on to, like, the Chicago Bulls tomorrow.
You'll laugh at me. Right? Why? Is it
because it would be bad? What if I
made it to the Bulls? Like, would there
be any skin off your back?
You know? I'd make billions. Why what what
skin off of your back would it be?
Like, we'd have, like, a nice bathroom. We'd
have, like, a proper sister site. We have
all these people, like, shit. You had separation.
I'm like, dude, like, we have, like, a
shoestring budget, you know. The separation is like
a look away from the sisters if you
have to go to the bathroom, you know.
And sisters, look away from the brothers if
you have to go to the you know,
it's not because of anything else other than
just because we're that broke. Otherwise, you're not
gonna put up a barrier in the masjid
when you don't even have carpets. You're making
sajdah in the sand. You know what I
mean? Like, that's how that's how life works.
The point is is this is that what
but that being said, it would not not
be any skin off your back if I
made it to the bulls.
But did I do anything honestly, to be
honest, did I do anything to prepare for
it?
No.
I didn't even try it. I mean, and
it's such a thing, even if I tried
my whole life, I probably still wouldn't make
it, but I didn't even try, which is
like icing on the cake of ridiculousness on
top of it.
Now we're talking all of this talk.
This is part of the spiritual path. In
fact, one of the reasons that the tariqas
amongst Sufis were so
powerful
in the middle and late history of Islam
is what?
There's a time after which the Khalifa doesn't
mean anything anymore in the Muslim world.
What happens? You have all of these kind
of sectarian and all of these, you know,
with the the starting with the starting with
the
wars of
against each other, starting with all of these
things. There comes a time where nobody wants
to fight for the Khalifa when he says
come fight, because they're no longer concerned with
expanding the the empire into the places it
hasn't gone, to taking the adhan to the
places it hasn't gone. Now what are they
concerned with? Quelling rebellion because everybody wants to
have piece of the pie and everybody wants
to have the seed. That pie that was
baked by the sacrifices of the companions
other generations of people, whether it's their own
children or whether it's other aqam.
They inherited it, ready made, and it was
given to them. So nobody wants to fight
anymore. Nobody wants to imagine the khalifa says,
go fight another Muslim. I'm not gonna fight
for him. You're gonna spill my blood in
order to die killing another person saying, I'll
probably end up in Jahannam. It
sucks in the dunya and it sucks in
the hereafter as well. Right? So what happened?
They have to import all of these, like,
slave Turkic slave soldiers from or, like, you
know, African slave soldiers and things like that.
There's a whole rebellion of the Zanooza in
in in,
in Iraq.
Right? Eventually, the Salajik are the Seljuks who
are, like, cousins of the the the Ottomans,
like, tribally, they're, like, from that branch of
the Turks. They realize, oh, shoot. The whole
army is just us.
And if we were to take this whole
thing over right now, this guy sitting, you
know,
this Abbasi sitting in Iraq can't do a
damn thing about it. And the lucky thing
for us as Muslims, historically, is that they
were pious people.
So they told
the Khalifa
the
perhaps anachronistically
stated but
accurate in meaning,
polite
command to have a coke and a smile
and shut the blank up.
And since then, the Khalifa, you know,
it was not really
functionally what it was from before that. And
that's the majority of the history of the
Khalifa.
Not mentioning then what happens if there's some
possible discontinuity in the
Mongol, and then afterward, it leaves Quraish and
goes
to the Banu Athman, which is disputed amongst
the people, the Ummah and all. But still,
I'm like, you know what? All of it.
I I accept all of it. I said,
no. This is a Khalifa, this and we
would love to have it back 100%.
The point is why are the Sufi tariqas,
like, rise during this time? Because even they
they're no no longer
able to command enough authority in order to
bring people together and have them function together.
When the Mongols destroyed the central heartlands of
Islam, the rebuilding was not done through the
rebuilding of the state.
The rebuilding was done through the Sufi brotherhoods.
Hajj al al Mudin Kubra, he went out
and he fought he fought, the army of
Genghis Khan with his Murids, and they were
all shaheed in the path of Allah Those
were not from. He sent them home. Those
were from. He said, you're a father. You
have to stay and fight.
And so he shield his,
he took his staff out and he filled
his pockets with rocks.
And he fought until his staff broke and
the rocks were done. And, Yashaweed, in the
path of Allah ta'ala, they say that he
actually grabbed the the flag from,
a Mongol soldier,
and they said that they couldn't pry it
out of his hands even after he died.
The rigor mortise, they couldn't get it out
of his hands. And it's not just rigor
mortise. It's one of the the the the
miracles of the holy of Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala.
But then who is it that rebuilds
everyone's dead, literally everyone's dead, everyone's dead.
Was never actually even rebuilt.
Who rebuilds Bukhara?
Who repopulates Bukhara? Who repopulates Samarkand? It says
Khalifa
who
goes and reads Sahih Bukhara after everything. Everyone's
killed. Everyone's dead. He goes and finds a
place of Imam Bukhari's mazar, and he reads
Bukhari over there, and people sit with him
for the reading, and they start rebuilding.
He goes and sits in Bukhara and starts
teaching, and the people from the countryside that
survived the massacre, they come and they repopulate
all of these cities. And look at so
much Khayr came from it. Out of the
Khajagan, 666
out of 7 and then all the way
up until and including,
Baha'u'di nakhsh Bandh. They're all after Mongol desolation.
They're the ones who built the economy. They're
the ones who built the cities. They're the
one who built all of these things, And
they're the ones it was because of them
that the state was restored, not the other
way around.
But why is this important to mention right
now?
It's important to mention if we cannot you
know, politics is one thing. Like, if someone's
like, I'm gonna run for president, you know,
or whatever. How we conceive of it as
Americans or how we conceive of it as,
just like normal people. If the politics is
for the sake of Allah ta'ala, that's part
of the deen. It's also part of your
as well, but it's not about winning elections
and votes. I could give a a less
of a dam about who gets elected.
If today's shaitan
makes toba and does the right thing tomorrow,
I'm happy. I don't care if he gets
elected.
If 1 shaitan 2 shaitans are running against
each other, and one shaitan says what?
If I get elected, I'll do x y
z, which is will help you and facilitate
you and your deen.
And the other shaitan says, no, I won't.
Let the shaitan who's elected help the deen.
Even the messenger of Allah salallahu alaihi wa
sallam said,
That Allah
will sometimes aid the deen
through a profligate person.
One of his wasaiyah, I read it in
his own handwriting. He said, that make sure
you're not that profligate person, that you're such
a corrupt person. You say and do all
the right things in front of people, but
you're inside so corrupt that a 1000000 people
enter into Jannah on the day of judgment
because of you and you're the one who
only the only one burning in the fire
afterward.
But that's a thing. It happens.
The politics takes a different form when you're
doing it through the prism of your saluk.
But it's still there. It still exists. You
still have to think about it. And so
in Ramadan,
this person who's forget about Sufi or whatever,
completely ideologically
one might bulk at, like, you know, any
sort of connection.
After making these suggestions myself in those gatherings
and it not really being taken all all
that seriously, he made a suggestion, forget about
Fadi and Amir and any of these things.
He said what?
He said, let's make a statement that we
can all sign on to
because this, Hamza Yousef, not Hamza Yousef Zaytun,
a California one, but Hamza Yusuf in Scotland,
the Desi Hamza Yusuf. He became the first
minister of Scotland. I met him when he
was, when he was a minister of the
Scottish Parliament.
He got elected, and he said a number
of things he said a number of things
about
about the LGBTQ
issue, and he mentioned it in the context
of sin or not sin and things like
that.
And,
you know, the thing is someone might say,
well, he's just a politician. He's only doing
it to save his seat. But the fact
of the matter is when someone says something,
it means something.
And then what happened is as a reaction
against that, some people say, you're a kafir.
You're out of Islam. You're, you know, you're
done. You're finished. This and that. As if
it's some sort of, like, you know, Donald
Trump, like, getting rid of someone on The
Apprentice or whatever. Right?
And these things, they they they disturb they
disturb the believers. Some of them should have
disturbed them, but, you know, it's a disturbance.
I didn't think there's not any good out
of either of those, either of those things
happening,
even if, even if, you know, there's an
element to truth in some some of it.
But,
I said, let's make a statement.
That statement all of us can sign
so that if someone mouths off in the
future,
then people will know, is this compliant and
conformant to Islam? Muslims will know. Non Muslims
will know. Furthermore, such a statement can be
something that kids who are, you know, don't
wanna participate in pride month in school
or
employees who don't wanna participate in it in
in it in their workplaces
or in government
You get paid $300 an hour. It's a
sweet gig,
which is what? That the court needs to
know, is this something that a Muslim has
to do or doesn't have to do? Is
this something really a part of Islamic law
or not? Is this marriage valid? Is it
not valid? Etcetera. And so I write my
synopsis. What happens always?
I'll write my synopsis saying you have to
pray 5 times a day. There'll be some
other crackpot, oftentimes,
a complete non Muslim. Some people are non
Muslims, but they claim to be Muslims. I'm
talking about 100% doesn't even claim to be
Muslim.
But, well, you know, in this, one transvestite
purple unicorn
Persian underwater source,
it says that, you know, there could be,
like, 4 prayers in the day or what.
And it's like and it's based on, like,
a misreading. So they'll put their
they'll put their statement forward as well. The
judge has no idea. It's not able to
bias. They can't be like, oh, well, this
person is a Sunni, so we're gonna you
know, the judge can't is has his hands
tied by inability to bias anything on in
one side, and on the other side, just
stark ignorance about any of it. Right? And
so what happens, people actually lose cases that
they should win because of that. So what
happens
what happened with me is that I'll write
a synopsis, and then they'll invite they'll they'll
not invite me. They'll I'll be, summoned for
a deposition, and and I have to under
oath, you know, the stenographer writing everything. If
I screw up anything that I'm saying or
say anything inconsistent, it's gonna cost the case
of the person that I'm writing the opinion
for, and I don't write
if a people wanna hire me, even at
$300 an hour, if the case is completely
nonsense and they want me to lie about,
the deen, I will not do it. But
But every case I've taken, we've won with
one exception where the the the lawyer himself
was very upset. He said, we this was
a slam dunk case, and we ended up
settling anyway because the client you know, I
tried to convince him to let it go
to court, but he was just afraid that
he's gonna otherwise, every case that I've ever
done the expert testimony for, we won.
So this document like this is invaluable because
it means what? That a person who's gonna
get fired from a job or they have
something canned already. And when you have, like,
what I think is up to 300 scholars
now and it's not just any random people.
They have to actually be scholars and imams.
Not just a dude who gives And there
are people like that who are trying to
get their names on it, and we're saying
no. These are people who have some sort
of scholarly authority or some sort of scholarly
training. The 300,
in some sense of the word, have signed
on to this thing. It makes it carries
a lot more authority in a legal in
a legal setting.
And it inoculates a person from the
celebrities and from the politicians who are gonna
lie about Islam in order to make money
or get their film, you know,
pushed out or, you know, whatever other things
that that that that they wanna do, that
they'll throw parts of the deed under the
bus
for.
This is a very important
milestone in the history of Islam in America
because you have not had anything like that
to my knowledge
that
so many people have come together and collaborated
on something. The thing is it's yes. Open
and chat. This should be common knowledge to
people. There are so many things that should
be common knowledge to people people will will
fight about.
It's not just something in America. It's something
it's a sickness that's there in the Muslim
world because we no longer care for each
other. We no longer love each other
in Pakistan.
Alright, Jawad. You're a Bengali, so you should
be happy. We're gonna grab a Pakistan a
little bit.
Right?
In Pakistan, there is a movement that the
ulama launched to get the Badyanis declared as
non Muslims. They believe in some crackpot guy
afterward who claimed he was a a a
nevi. He made a bunch of bogus predictions.
None of them came true. He used to
cuss from the mimbar, and he said, I'm
the messenger of Allah. And he also happened
to say, you know, say that, like, you
know, we don't fight against the British. How
convenient.
And their world headquarters is not in India.
It's not in Pakistan. It's where? It's in
London.
To get Adyanis
declared as non Muslims
constitutionally within Pakistan. It should be there's a
legal procedure, but it should be an open
and shut case.
It was a big movement. There was a
lot of a lot of flack that was
given. You have to remember, initially, the Qadianis
were the one of the first groups of
people who at least culturally identify as Muslims
that took, British education and that
foreign minister
foreign minister of Pakistan was Kadhiani as well,
and they had very strong positions,
in the in the country and in the
in the government.
To get through that process was a difficult
process. They finally got
through
it. The kinsmen of mine distant kinsmen of
mine who was the one who signed it.
He was a relatively corrupt individual. He was
known to drink. It said that when they
came to the signing ceremony of this constitutional,
amendment
that he literally had a the, you know,
the trolley with, like, the the different spirits
and everything over there. 1 of the, you're
like the you're like the sovereign leader of
a Muslim country. If you wanna drink, at
least do it on the side, like, so
openly. And so he laughed at them.
Right? You have Jamaat e Islami there. You
have Ali Hadis, the Salafi's there. You have
the Deobandis there. The Deobandis there. The Deobandis
there. The Brailes are there. You know, the
modernists. Everybody, Shia Sunni. Everybody's there. Right? All
their top scholars.
And he laughed at them. He said, like,
look.
If you if you guys can all pray
the next salat that comes in, if you
can all pray in 1 congregation
behind 1 imam, forget about hiding it. I
I'll give up drinking altogether. Guess what?
At least they had the of all agreeing
that like a Nabi after the prophet is
fake. At least they could do that much.
More than that was too much for them
to to do. And if you think America
is better, America is far more fragmented than
that.
So the fact that anyone would come together
even bigger because the thing is, like, if
you were to ask, like, you know, you
were to be like, oh, there's a document
that says being gay is haram.
You'd be like, surprise, surprise. What do you
want? Like, a Nobel Prize, Sherlock?
We all know that. Even the people say
it's not, they all know it.
It's a baseline assumption from which even they
start their their discussions because we all know
it's true.
In some ways, even more amazing is what?
That 300 people who have to compete with
each other for Masjid positions, for for the
speaker positions
at conferences to get
view views and hits on social media, to
get invitations and sponsorships and honoraria and all
of these other things that literally will undercut
one another for the most petty and stupid
of things that I've seen it happen.
But this one time, they put it aside
for the sake of Allah
in order to do this one thing and
to say the haqq
it's a big deal.
Some of the signatories to that, document, by
the way, are actually university professors. Do you
know how imperiled they are in their livelihood
and how imperiled they are in their,
health and even maybe safety and well-being
by doing something like this. And some of
them are people who have muffed off and
said really dumb things in the past, in
my opinion.
But you know what? Everyone, what you say,
you can give them a charitable interpretation. I'm
actually inclined to give them a charitable interpretation
right now. Why? Be maybe they didn't mean
it as badly as I thought that they
meant it when they said it. Why?
Because this person actually put something on the
line for the sake of Allah. I don't
see that they're gonna get any benefit other
than something otherworldly through this. Because last I
checked,
ever since that, the era of the Sahaba
radiAllahu ta'ala and whom even
the the early era of the the
doesn't seem to treat its people who speak
the truth very well.
Starting with and
then going onward. Doesn't seem to, like, give
priority to that.
All that dependably. It does happen, but it's
not all that dependable.
And then I on the flip side, I've
seen people who are literally imams. They sit
in the masjid only with their own disciples.
They don't even have to talk to someone
of a different madhab,
much less of a different or of a
non Muslim or a hostile,
academic, liberal, or whatever,
conservative, whatever it is, and they still won't
sign it.
So put them aside.
Put them aside.
They didn't have to, Insha'Allah, they'll, you know,
they'll collaborate in their own way some other
time. Allah judges people. I don't care. But
at least we if we don't wanna speak
ill of people, at least those people who
who
did make a sai, you should recognize. It's
a big deal.
It it is a big deal. It's something
that should have some sort of honor in
Ihtiram.
And as people who are not,
you know, who are not in those circles
and don't have to argue those arguments, debate
those debates, fight those fights,
we should also give some sort of support
to those people who are amenable to working
with one another.
That we don't have to get together and
make a document that says that you cannot
say Amin out loud in the salat or
that you have to say Amin out loud
in the salat. We're no. But those things
that are have to do with the life
and death of our our and the life
and death of our community, we can get
together and do those things, say those things
so that a time doesn't come. Right? This
state isn't there yet, but there are states
in the union that are already there where
the school can
start gender reassignment
transitioning for your child without informing you much
as getting consent from you.
That they'll if you if you tell them
no, they have the right to take you
away because you're endangering the child's welfare on
some sort of, like, a mental health argument.
It's gonna keep getting worse and worse and
worse and worse.
And to say right now, oh, look. The
wording, I would have said it differently. Therefore,
I'm not gonna participate in it by we're
talking to non Muslims right now.
We're talking to government right now.
They're not interested in your feelings and you
expressing yourself. It's a legal it's a document
that will be
used in legal settings and in corporate settings
and in institutional settings.
If you're saying this is not oh, it's
not hard. It's, you know, very compromised. Of
course, we started the talk saying what? We're
compromised by being here.
You compromise the day you came here.
If you were born here or if you
came against your will, you are compromised.
Whether it's your fault or not, you are
compromised by staying here.
You might be compromised by being in a
Muslim country in different ways.
But there is a compromise. Nobody's Allah that
you can stand up
and say, no. I'm gonna like everybody and,
like, zap everybody with their fingers. The sunnah
Hudaybiyyah, the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, how
did he write the Surah Nama? Was it
a genuine expression of the sentiments of the
Muslims? No. When Suhail bin Amr
told
who to blot out Muhammad, the messenger of
Allah, I'm not gonna sign that. If I
thought you're the messenger of Allah, why would
we have fought you? Even though afterward, he
became one of the most devout Muslims.
And he told saying that Ali said, no.
Ali is he wasn't he's like, I can't
erase that. How can I erase that? He
said, show me where it's written. I'll I'll
I'll erase it. So Mohammed bin Abdullah.
This is the Rasul Sallallahu Alaihi wa Salam
will
not compromise. We'll be so angry.
We'll burn down your neighborhood and we'll come
back and burn down our own neighborhood just
because we're that angry afterward.
If you don't believe me, go visit the
Muslim world and see. Maybe some people have
not seen that before. Go see that. That's
what
the Ahid of Muhammad means.
Sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam.
Even that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
himself, he he he told them to do
that.
You're telling me that until I write in
the thing, die faggot, die, you're somehow compromised?
That's not how we talk to people.
That's not how we give dawah to non
Muslims. That's not how the law works here.
If your job is to is to just
say I did it for the sake of
saying I did it,
then congratulations. Write your own documents. You I
know what the point is, whatever. If it's
raw, I won't speak against it if what's
in in it is right.
If on the other hand, you want to
actually make progress,
you actually want to live in the real
world, you want to acknowledge your realities, and
you want to do something to safeguard yourself
and be a beacon of hope for other
people. Because people in this country, they know
that this is all silliness. This is nonsense.
The man himself
who's walking around in a dress insisting that
people call him a woman himself knows that
he's not a woman.
Forget about anybody else.
They don't understand how to cope with these
traumas that they have with their experiences with
the church, with their experience with repressive governments,
with their experiences in their own history.
They don't have a sharia to fall back
on. They don't have words that have definitions
to them. They don't know they don't have
any of these things. The Ummah people are
looking to the Ummah to be a beacon
of hope and light and understanding for them
so that they can understand these things and
work through them.
And already,
just days, the the document was signed
from the Catholic church, from evangelical,
pastors, from, you know, academics who are fair
minded.
They're saying, you know, we're we're discussing your
document in our circles, and we're thinking about
writing something like this, or we stand with
you, or we you know why? Because
these are things that that we did. It's
a big deal.
The they
complain and they cry about their irrelevance. Why
Someone in academia will say something like the
Kaaba. The word Kaaba is not doesn't refer
to but it's actually a quickie mart in
Crownpone Indiana.
And, you know, because this word means this
in Syria.
We're they say something, they write something, we
have to deal with the consequences.
This is the first time in my recollection
that the did something. They're the ones who
are in the driver's seat. They drove some
sort of change. Now the academics are all
scrambling. Some are saying that this is reasonable.
Some are saying that it's not. They're debating
when negotiating with one another. How are we
gonna cope with this?
Now you're going to tell me afterward that
this is, you know, like, you're gonna have
all these objections about it. It's fine. It's
not a I myself say it's not a
optimally worded document. Why? Because compromise requires that
nobody thinks it's optimally worded. But in order
to get everybody on board,
certain things have to be changed as long
as it's not so substantive that it actually
puts us into sin or takes us out
of the deen or, you know, it takes
away from what the underlying point is that
needs to be made. That's kind of how
compromise works. Or what do you want? Do
you want us to all have civil war
as
compromise works. Or what do you want? Do
you want us to all have civil war
as Muslims that Salafi is fighting, Sufi and
Hanafi and Shafi'i and Maliki are fighting each
other and Shia is
fighting Sunni. One thing look. I have very
strong opinions about that. Right? But the other
thing is that there's, like, Mohammed Hussein over
here and Mohammed Hussein over there. One of
them is Shia, the other Sunni. You ask
him what does it mean to be Shia?
And he says that it's to love the
family of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
And then the Sunni says, I I also
love the family of the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam. And they have no idea what
the difference is that their motives argue about
are.
For them to fight, is it somehow you
useful?
It's absolutely not useful at all. Even though
I know what's in their books, they know
what's in our books, we'll argue about something
that actually is a substantive difference of opinion
the day all along. There's 2 people on
the street who pray 5 times a day
arguing about labels. You can see why it's,
like, it's
that no one cares. There are nations of
earth that wanna obliterate Islam and Muslims. When
they send the bomb down, they don't care
about
what your opinion is regarding the Esmail of
the Sahaba when the bomb comes down. They
don't give a damn about any of that.
They just want your oil
or whatever it is they're trying to jack
today because that's what they do. Right?
The point is the point is that now
that this thing has happened, please, for the
sake of the lord, my
heartfelt
request of everybody
is that it's a win.
Accept it as a win.
People, when they do good things,
encourage them. Be like, yeah. You guys did
good.
You know? Every single post of yours on
Facebook, hamza.
It's this accurate sectarian
battle that just never ends.
And finally,
you were able to, like, put something aside
and, like, work with another Muslim man for
the benefit of us and for the benefit
of other people in this country as well
who, you know, wanna recycle their cans when
they're done drinking them, but they also don't
want, you know, they don't want their children
to be, like, 57 genders or whatever. So
they voted for Trump just based on and
don't even know what his position on refugees
is or whatever. Right? This is a beacon
of light for them. Say, look. The Muslims
have some solutions for your problems.
You can recycle as well and but it
doesn't mean that and you can also nice
and compassionate to people. Some are people are
suffering from their personal issues or whatever. You
don't have to say bad words to them
and call them, like, a derogatory term that
I probably shouldn't have used in this or
really anywhere. Right? You don't have to you
don't have to do that. You don't have
to you don't have to be mean to
them. But at the same time, you can
still have a good prophetic and still be
completely against what it is that they're doing.
And give them the space also to be
able to make Tawba from what it is
that they're afflicted with or whatever. Like, you're
a reasonable person.
You're working with people
just like you like to be worked with
in order to bring a person to the
to something better.
And even if you can't, you're not the
guy who wants to just, like, flush everything
down the toilet as long as everything's not
your way. For one time when people get
together and do this thing, say thank you,
support them, and, you know, be you know,
pray for this unity to increase because all
it takes is some people to put aside
a little bit of their their their fragmentedness.
I mean, people ask me, why do you
even have this meeting
in in rebat? Why am I even renting
this place?
If I knew a masjid in which the
program was not gonna end in fitna, I
would have done it.
I would have been imam in the same
masjid for, like, all these years if that
wasn't the case.
I've been through the bitter end of all
of that. I myself am refreshed that look,
This thing actually worked out.
This is what I claimed that I hoped.
It's a test from Allah because
sometimes our own, like, conflicts with one another,
we cherish them so much at some point
where when you say you want unity, when
you finally get it, you're like, no. I
wanted it. I realized, no. I don't really
want unity. I wanna see this person destroyed.
You know? Trust me. I totally relate.
I I totally relate. I would be a
liar if I said I didn't.
But
gave everybody a brain. You know? It gave
everybody a mental you know, a rational faculty
that you have to
work hard in order to
make it dominant over your emotions. Because, emotionally,
I totally see that, like, desire to destroy
people, like,
screwed me over in the past or have
been betrayed some portion of the trust of
the deen.
Put it aside. This is a good thing.
It's a win.
Let's work together for these things in the
future. Let's work with people that that we're
able to work with.
Don't let people take make a fool of
you. Don't let people,
use you,
you know, go in with your eyes open.
But sometimes there are those times when people
do put aside their differences and they do
work for the better. It's happened in the
history of Islam, and it's always been great
barakah
from it. Sometimes one good deed you'll see
that generations will eat and drink from the
barakah of that for 100 of years afterward.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala give us a tawfiq
of looking for these things and finding these
things and asking for them so that he
can give them to us and,
inoculate us from being those people who are
completely 100%
benefit proof and Baraka proof and Nur proof
and Akal proof,
to the point that we actually hate those
things,
and,
it becomes
untenable afterward. It just becomes just irrational afterwards.
It's a punishment in in and of itself
in this world, and the punishment to die
here after is worse.
And, again, there are people who have substantive,
objections to the document that are
well articulated. I'm not talking about that. I
myself have my own objections. I'm one of
the drafters, one of the 4 drafters. There's
300 signatories with 4 4 initial drafters.
I'm one of them. I myself have objections.
I would have word worded certain things differently.
That's not what I'm talking about. But I'm
just saying that this oh, no. Like, politically,
this is not with me. And so I'm
just gonna, like,
you know, I'm just gonna, like, deprecate it
over and over again just, you know, in
a way
that has no rational bounds that proposes no
reasonable alternative and that has no,
sort of other benefit that that that's tangibly
perceivable by by by intelligent people.
Protect us from that dogmatic antagon.