Ingrid Mattson – Loving God, Loving Neighbor & Living in Harmony
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
I spoke to you earlier about the moments
that this convention has meant to me in
my life and the moments that have stood
out. And one of those was a few
years ago in this very hall when we
announced the first ever female president of ISNA.
And tonight, inshallah, she'll be she'll be speaking
to us no longer as president, but as
someone who will continue to serve this organization,
doctor Ingrid Matson.
Assalamu
Muhammad.
Well, now that I'm no longer president of
ISNA,
I feel liberated
to,
say what's on my mind. No. I all
I always did.
But,
you know, I have prepared a talk here,
that addresses the theme.
But as I was coming here, there were
some people who were mentioning
the,
talk that we had last night, the panel
that we had last night.
And during that panel,
we were speaking about some of the hardships
that we
faced last year.
It was a really difficult year,
2,010.
And during the month of Ramadan,
which was the month when
we wanted to be the most connected with
our religion,
We
found
the most
very
disturbing
kind of statements and opposition
to Islam and Muslims in America. It was
it was really a very troubling month and
I know I I was dis And she
spoke about all the effort that was made
last year to
And she spoke about all the effort that
was made last year to prevent,
one, we could say rogue
Christian pastor
from burning the Quran.
The fact that despite all those efforts that
in the end, he went ahead and did
it anyways.
Even though the vast,
you know, a large, almost consensus
of Christian leaders
told him that it was not a Christian
thing to do.
So she said, I feel so bad. I
feel like I didn't do enough.
And one of the things I said to
her is to remember this.
That
the Quran
is preserved
in the hearts of the Muslims.
It is not primarily preserved in books.
In fact, even
at the time when the prophet Muhammad sallallahu
alaihi wasallam died,
the Quran
was
not preserved as a complete
book at that time.
It was preserved in the memory and the
hearts of the Muslims.
So the
the physical book is
only
a memory device.
The main
source of the Quran, of course, the Quran
is the eternal living word of God.
And as such, it could never disappear.
But even on this earth, we preserve it
within us.
And
I thought, you know, one thing maybe we
could do tonight
is to
prove that
together
and to remind ourselves of that.
Now I was thinking of taking a poll
of hands and asking how many
there are in
the audience. How many people here have memorized
the Quran.
And then asking
oh, someone raised your hand already.
You have a memory of our ancestor?
Okay. Well, maybe I'll begin with that.
Let's just show show of hands. We have
at least one person in this audience who
has memorized the Quran. Can you please raise
your hand if you have memorized
the Quran?
I think actually you deserve a hand, so
if you'll stand up if you've memorized the
Quran.
These brothers and sisters are a very small
representation
of millions of Muslims across the world. And
it doesn't take a lot of resources. We
know that there are children
who are living in 1 room houses who
memorize the Quran.
Who eat perhaps
6, 700 calories a day, yet they still
memorize the Quran.
So the word of God does not need
a lot
to sustain it. We only
need to commit ourselves
to being part of that great tradition, to
be part
of that beautiful fellowship of people
who retain the word of God in our
hearts.
But let's I wanna include everyone.
You know, the prophet Muhammad
said that there's one verse of the Quran
that is equivalent
to a third of the Quran. That if
you read it, it is like reading a
third of the Quran, and that is.
Now I'm not trying to begin,
to,
establish some kind of,
innovation and worship here. Doctor Mozambos Siddiqui, you
can interrupt me if you say I'm doing
anything wrong here.
But I think just for the sake of
our own
awareness
of what this community
is able to do together,
and what we have within us,
apart from anything external to us,
I would like us to read 1 third
of the Quran
out loud together.
So I begin.
I hope that you retain
this
awareness and understanding as you leave this convention,
as you go back to your communities,
as you carry forward in Ramadan.
You are the ones, you are the preservers.
No one can hurt that.
No one can hurt Islam. No one can
hurt the Quran
as long as you carry it with you
wherever you go. And with that, inshallah, we'll
have success.
Now, sister, you can start timing me because
this is the real beginning of my talk.
I was I was asked to address the
the topic today and I if you'll have
a little patience with me, it may sound
somewhat academic at the beginning.
But if you can pay attention
maybe a little more closely at the beginning,
then you'll understand my point.
And
what I want to,
the title of my talk is fences
make good neighbours.
When I was studying 1st year Arabic,
our professor occasionally read to us from a
book of Arabic proverbs.
I recall being struck in particular by the
expression,
choose the neighbor before the house.
My initial reaction was that this proverb opposed
one that I grew up
hearing my mother say.
Fences
make good neighbors.
The Arabic saying seemed to stress the importance
of human relationships.
And my mother's words, and she is a
Christian woman of English and German heritage,
seem to me to stress
distance and separation.
Now,
this understanding of course was undermined by the
knowledge
that I knew my mother. And although she
valued privacy, I knew she was not an
unfriendly person.
Therefore, I wanted to explore this apparent dichotomy
on a deeper level.
To see if there were indeed some essential
differences
between English and Arabic culture, or Christian and
Islamic perspectives on how we should live together.
So
let me step back in time when I
first heard this saying,
Choose the neighbor before the house.
I can tell you that this came at
a time
in my life when I'd been Muslim for
only a few years.
As a convert to any religion will tell
you, there are always many people around
who look at you as highly malleable in
your faith. And they hope to influence your
views and practices
in one direction or another.
As a new Muslim,
the proper relationship of Muslims
to people of other faiths
was certainly one of the hot topics about
which everyone seemed to have an opinion.
Some Muslims
forcefully asserted that the dividing line between Muslims
and all non Muslims,
in fact, was a demarcation
between perfection and corruption,
guidance and misguidance,
good and evil.
The belief in the complete absence of goodness
in any,
people outside of the community of believers
compelled these ideologues to essentialize
any apparent differences in our communities.
Even simple cultural differences were for these people
a sign
of a deeper
core value or lack of value.
Now if I had embraced this ideology, it
would have been easy for me to look
at the difference between the English and the
Arabic proverbs about neighbours
as a sign of essential differences.
I could have looked to the Arabs as
warm people who care about neighbours and human
relationships,
and the English as cold individualists.
Now,
the antidote to ideology
is knowledge.
Both in the form of scholarly learning, as
well as common sense.
So if I was going to get to
the bottom of the meaning of these apparently
different approaches to neighbors,
I was going to have to do some
more research and to think.
What I first learned is that my mother
saying was in fact a widely articulated European
proverb
that came in many forms. Most famously perhaps
in its appearance in Robert Frost's poem, Mending
Wall. Where it reads,
good fences make good neighbours.
Now I realize that there had been an
ellipsis
or an absence
in my mother's statement. An assumed
meaning,
which is what the word ellipsis means in
my mother's statement. And that I had as
a child utterly misunderstood her meaning.
When my mother said fences make good neighbours,
I thought she had meant she preferred a
wall of stone and mortar to a human
being as a neighbour.
I had thought that she meant that dealing
with human beings who are needy and nosy
is more trouble than they're worth.
In fact, what she meant, and what the
saying means, is that it is easier to
keep good relations with your neighbours
if there are clear boundaries between your property
and theirs.
Property disputes are avoided, and privacy can be
maintained when these lines are clear.
The fences, while keeping neighbours apart in some
aspects,
also allow them to live side by side
for many years in peace.
The relevance
of this story for today is that all
too too often
religious polemicist
make the kinds of leaps of judgment
that I could have made in this situation.
If we are to be people of integrity
and honesty,
we have to push back against these simplistic
approaches to each other's
languages and cultures and experiences.
How often have we read polemical approaches to
Islam?
Where the sacred sources of our traditions,
our tradition, the Quran, and the teachings of
the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him,
are ascribed a negative meaning.
Because all of the tools of proper exegesis,
historical and cultural context,
grammar and linguistic analysis
are ignored in a frenzied search
for an essential rotten core.
I am sure that Christians have experienced the
same kind of assault
on their tradition by hostile outsiders.
In particular,
the neo atheists,
and their complete distortion of any religious tradition
and their text.
So what does our tradition really say about
neighbours? And there are so many teachings and
so little time to speak about it.
But we can begin with the Quran, which
says,
worship God and do not ascribe a partner
to him. Treat in the best manner your
parents,
as well as your relatives,
orphans, the needy,
the neighbor close to you, and the neighbor
who is a stranger.
Your companions,
the wayfarer,
and your slaves.
Verily God does not love those who are
conceited and arrogant.
So here is a clear teaching.
And the scholars have said,
many of them have said that the neighbor
who is a stranger
is in fact
the one who is not a Muslim.
Specifically Christian or Jewish neighbors.
And when we say the neighbor, treating the
neighbor well, we absolutely
mean those of any faith.
It's reported that the prophet Muhammad peace be
upon him said, Gabriel kept advising me to
take care of the neighbor to the point
that I thought he would make him an
heir.
And that this statement of the prophet Mohammed,
peace be upon him, was in response to
a question from 1 Muslim
who asked whether he should give
some,
some of the meat of a lamb that
he slaughtered to his Jewish neighbor.
The response absolutely.
The neighbor is so critical
regardless of their faith.
Now, what is this? What is this what
is the role of the statement of the
prophet Mohammed peace be upon him? What is
the role of this Quranic verse?
This in fact is Sharia.
Sharia is simply
what guides our behavior.
What is right and what is wrong for
us to do. It is our ethics. It
is our values. It is our principles.
This is and it is
that requires
us to have
excellent relationships with our neighbours.
And let me just do a quick fact
check here.
I just was with the group
ages 12 to 18, and I asked them
a question, and I'd like to ask you
this question and then another one.
First, I would like to ask, raise your
hand
if you have any relative,
aunt, uncle, brother-in-law,
sister-in-law,
sister, brother, some
relative,
blood relative, or relative by blood or marriage.
Who is not a Muslim?
Who is a Christian or a Jew or
someone else? Raise your hand.
When we look at the diversity of the
Muslim community,
I would say that this is
probably
maybe 20%,
15 to 20%
of the audience raise their hand.
The significant number of our community is related
by blood or marriage
to someone of another faith.
Bonds of love
and blood
keep us together.
We are not a community that is
somehow separate from everyone else in this society.
We already
have our futures,
our hopes, the very existence of our families
entangled with people of other communities. Now let
me ask you another question.
How many of you would count among your
closest friends?
Someone who you would
regularly
go to for advice,
invite to your home for dinner, or socialize
with on a regular basis, how many of
you would would count among your closest friends
a non Muslim?
I think it's
most of the vast majority of people in
this hall.
So this is the reality of our community.
And so when we bring together
our religious teachings with the reality,
then we can see an accurate reflection of
who our community is. And it is because
of both this
religious commitment, this ethical commitment, as well as
the reality of our lives
that our community
is already committed to the common good.
We have Muslims across this country who are
working
on a regular basis for the betterment of
this society.
We have over a dozen healthcare,
centers
who have been that have been opened and
who are run by Muslims.
We have
hundreds of examples of soup kitchens,
shelters,
volunteer work that are done for the general
community. This community raised 1,000 and 1,000 of
dollars for the people of Haiti, the people
of New Orleans,
the floods, and the hurricanes that plagued this
country just in the last,
6 months. The Muslim community has donated generously.
So
we do not need to justify our presence.
We do not need to start from scratch.
We already have very deep roots in this
society.
We have a good start.
And the key is to keep focused
on the right thing and not get distracted
by those people who would love
for us to be distracted.
To burn and expend all of our energy
into
endless
endless
and fruitless
debate,
framed in a manner
that of their own making where we constantly
are turning our attention to defending ridiculous accusations
about Islam
instead
of turning to those who already
have have opened their arms and opened their
hearts to us and working with them
to address the real problems of this society.
I urge you,
certainly things are going to get more difficult
in the next year. We are going to
struggle
with a lot
of politicization
of religious discourse, of prejudice.
Don't get distracted.
Remember
that we have a very strong foundation.
We have our friends and our neighbours.
We have a very good
basis that we're already,
that we continue to build on. And inshallah,
Allah will bless us for as long as
we continue to do this work with sincerity.
May Allah bless all of you and your
families.