Balancing Deen & Dunya

Ismail Kamdar

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Channel: Ismail Kamdar

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Episode Notes

A Jumah Khutbah focused on lessons from the Golden Age of Islam, and the importance of balancing Deen & Dunya.

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Salam Alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh

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hamdulillahi Rabbil alameen wa salatu salam ala nabina Karim Allah Allah He was happy as

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we begin by praising Allah subhanho wa Taala and asking Allah to send his peace and blessings upon the final prophet, Muhammad ibn Abdullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, and all those who follow his way with righteousness until the end of time.

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Today, I want to take a look at a few examples from Islamic history

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about the importance of having a balance between this world and the next between Jean Antonia

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and I believe is a very important topic because we live in a time where Muslims seem to be a one of two extremes. Right? They are those Muslims, who are very religious, but know nothing about this world.

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And those who are very professional in their fields, but know nothing about their religion.

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We have a group of Muslims today, who may Master Master Akita, they may become Muslim, they may become great scholars of Islam.

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But they have no understanding how this world works. And that creates a disconnect between them and the average Muslim.

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And then we have on the other hand, Muslims who may have become masters in the fields of mathematics or psychology, or English or accounting, but they want nothing to do with their religion. They don't want to practice Islam at all. Now, this disconnect is very recent. This is a recent trend in Islamic history. This is not the way Muslims were for the majority of our history. If you study Islamic history, you will find

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that especially during the Golden Ages of Islam, Muslims had a balance between Deen and dunya. Muslims excelled at this world and religion at the same time.

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And this is what I want to speak about today, I want to give a few examples from the Islamic Golden Ages to show you how the Muslims of the past they found this balance between being religious and succeeding in this world doesn't have to choose one or the other. And I believe it's because they found this balance that the Muslims at their time were the most powerful people on earth. They were the greatest nation on Earth, the Muslim of that time, we go into a golden age. And before I go any further, just let me just explain what I mean by Muslim Golden Ages because some of us may not even be aware of this part of our history.

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There have been many Muslim empires over the past 1400 years. And each of these major empires went through a golden age. The abbasids in Baghdad had the golden age in the third and fourth century of Islam. At the same time, the Romanians had a golden age in Spain.

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About 500 years ago, the Ottomans had a golden age in Turkey. What do I mean by Golden Age? Look at the Ottoman Empire, for example, the Ottoman Empire about 500 years ago, they ruled over 50 countries, most of them in Europe. The Ottomans ruled over 50 countries, most of them in Europe, the rule of whole other countries across Africa, Asia and Europe at the same time, that was a golden age for Islam.

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And what I am proposing is that one of the reasons Muslims had a golden age at that time is because they had a balance between this world and the next. They succeeded in worldly sciences and religion at the same time. They mentality was not one of this or that

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the idea that you had to choose between religious knowledge and worldly knowledge. I believe this is a colonial idea. This is an idea that came when the British colonized Muslim countries, and they secularized our education system.

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But before that Muslims pursued both a man would become a scholar of Islam and a mathematician. A person will become a professor of medicine, and a professor of someone who become an expert in Hades and the expert in navigation astrology, it wasn't considered separate in the Golden Ages of Islam. Actually, I want to mention four examples of this. For examples that clearly show that when the Muslims were at their best when they were at their peak, they did not have any differentiation between Dini and junior knowledge and they excelled in both. One example of this can be seen in the field of medicine.

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Throughout Islamic history, until very recently, Muslims lead the world in Islamic when it comes to medicine when it comes to medical knowledge. For the bulk of our history, Muslims lead the world

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Right, Muslims invented surgical tools. They invented hospitals, they invented Medical Colleges medical degrees. They invented many of the modern forms of medicine we use today.

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And what's amazing is they invented all of these things, because of Islam. Many of the people who invented these things eventually because of one of these, what is it Hades, that Hades in which the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said that for every cure for every disease, Allah has created a cure, or did the promise of all the Some say, for every disease, Allah has created a cure. Based on this Hadees the early Muslims believe any disease that exists experiment, and we research and we try, we can eventually find a cure for it. And so they push themselves to the very limits of, of the human understanding of that time to discover medicines that nobody else has discovered, to

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advance in medical knowledge to a level that nobody else has advanced.

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So we see from this, they did not regard the study of medicine of becoming doctors as something separate from Islam. They became doctors, they excelled in medicine, they discovered new forms of medication. Why? Because that's what the Muslim does. Right? Because Allah said that we should help people. Allah says in the Quran, whoever saves the lives as if they have saved all of humanity. And based on this kind of verse, people chose to enter the medical field. People chose to research and find cures for illnesses that nobody thought was curable, because the prophets why some had said every disease has a cure. So the pursuit of worldly knowledge was for the sake of religion, or

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because of the firm belief in this religion. So they saw no separation between the two. And so it is very common to find early in Islamic history, amazing doctors were ultra scholars of Vic and Hades, amazing doctors and scientists who also happen to Quran. Why? Because they did not regard these as separate. They studied everything.

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A second example of this would be the invention of algebra. I do as it was originally called the Arabic algebra in the third century of Islam in Baghdad during the golden age of the Abbasid Empire. They passage has established a place of research called beta hikma, the house of wisdom. And anybody in the world who was a scientist or an experiment or some kind of researcher could come and research and study and experiment at this beta Hickman and people of every religion every race came and lived in Baghdad to study and to research. And one of the people who are researching adrenal hikma was a person by the name of Mohammed Abu Saleh, RSV, Mohammed Musa RSV. And he,

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he went on to invent something that we use, and we teach everyday today, I call it algebra, which later got anglicize into algebra.

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And later on, based on the teaching of algebra, Western scholars invented a computer system called the algorithm. Where did they get the name algorithm from? They named it after a while in honor of him for inventing algebra. But what I want to get to is why, why the hell worries me? Why didn't the Muslim scholar 1100 years ago invent something called algebra? Was it to make school hard for children? No, it was to solve some very practical religious problems. At the very beginning of his book on algebra. In his introduction, the very first page Muhammad Musa Hall recently begins by praising Allah and Sydney Peace and blessings upon the prophets life. Simon says that he's writing

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this and he's proposing this, and he's coming up with this idea to solve complicated issues related to DACA and inheritance.

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The fix of Zika and inheritance can be very complicated, requires very high mathematical skills. Nowadays, we lucky nowadays you go online, you have apps or websites or doodle for you. You need to work out your inheritance entire websites, this type of how many family members how much money and you'll tell you exactly what the Islamic fee of each person is, but 1200 years ago, that didn't exist. So in order to solve issues in order to help the oma practice the deen better, a Muslim researcher invented a new form of mathematics called algebra or algebra, which went on to change the world. It went on to become one of the most important sciences in the world that we use every day

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today. If it wasn't for the invention of algebra, we would not have the technology we have today, because all of these are running on algorithms, which are themselves based on algebra and even named after the founder of algebra.

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Alpha. So in both of these examples, we see a very common thread, right, a very common idea. And a common idea is that early Muslims did not regard his religious knowledge as separate from working knowledge in have, you know, you go to madrasa to learn or your your, your vehicle, you go to school to learn algebra, it was all one, they used algebra to solve issues, they use hobbies to research medicine, it was all one. And that takes me to the third example of how the Muslims excelled in Deen and dunya, in the Golden Ages. And that was the invention, the invention of the madrasa system. And by the madrasa system, I'm not talking about our watered down madressa system of the 21st century,

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I'm talking about the madrasa system that existed in the family. So that was, you know, up at the time of the argument and in the early ages of Islam, the real madrasa system, the one that we lost, the one that we lost, when the British invaded our lands, it taught us this system, right there was a much better system that existed before that. The Muslims called it the madrasa system. Now madrasa means a place of learning, that's all it means. A place of learning a school. Right? So essentially, we can see Muslims invented school, but what kind of school?

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In the ancient times when the Muslims invented the madrasa system, it was a place where you could go to learn maths, science, medicine, religion, language, anything. It was a place where all have these weird thoughts? And there was no separation between this is Islamic Studies. And this is secular studies. No, it was all connected, right? And what he would do is when the seven year old would go to this institute to study, they would look at the child and see, what is he gifted at? What does he What Is he good at. And he would shape his curriculum accordingly. So if a seven year old went to the madrasa and they saw this child had a gift for max, they would push him to become a

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mathematician. If they saw he had a gift for medicine, they would push him to become a doctor. It is not yet a gift for Hades in Colorado, pushing to memorize Quran and Hadees. So from the age of seven, they were able to determine where a person was what they would excel in, and they will teach them that specifically. And so that person by the age of 13, or 14 will be an expert in that field. I'm talking about when you look at people, like even battuta even seen any of the famous Muslim scientists and researchers and scholars, they were experts by the age of 1516.

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Our children are still in school at that age, because we adopted the messed up system of the web. But in those days, people were experts by the age of 16, people were discovering new medicines by the age of 18. Now people were changing the world by the age of 20, because they had a system that worked. And that system was very simple. The system said there is no difference between worldly knowledge and religious knowledge. You study your religion so you can practice it. And whatever you excel at, wherever you are good at you focus your life on studying that and benefiting humanity through that. But then what happened was colonialism, the British came in, they took over Egypt,

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they took over India, they implemented their school system with a secularize concept. They separated the Islamic Studies put it in the afternoon to the Muslim yoga teachers separately called that madressa called the school. And we ended up with two separate systems. And now we have Muslims on two ends. Those who want who think school is important and madressa is not. And those who think Vijay has important at school is not both of them are wrong, because historically Muslims did not treat them as separate. Historically, it was all connected. Historically, a Muslim would excel in vote, right a person would excel in both clear example imaam Abu hanifa, right we all most of us in

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Durban claimed to be hanafis but many of us have enemies we either against studying this dunya against school, we don't understand a very simple concept. Oh, honey by himself. He was not just a scholar of a decent fit. He was a very successful and learned businessman. He excelled in business. And he did not regarded as something lower or something that's not important or something that's, you know, by the way, that was something he truly excelled at. No, he was an expert at it. Like the early Muslims were experts in Deen and dunya. Abu hanifa being a great example of that,

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on the end of a very strange example, something where if you look at it, you wouldn't think there's any way to associate it with Islamic religion. Right? But even the invention of this thing comes from Islam and for Islamic reasons. And that's coffee. Coffee, originally known in Arabic patois. Why was coffee invented?

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Very fascinating. Why was coffee invented? Coffee the earliest usage we know of coffee as an actual drink is by Sufi mystics who were trying to find something to keep them awake at night for tahajjud and ridiculous for studying Islam.

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Trying to find something to keep them awake at night to give them energy for the Rico sessions and for studying Islam for praying to hydrate, and they came across this coffee seed. And you know, the legend says that a coffee farmer notice he's going to be eating these beans are getting hyper. So he experimented, they found out that these beans give people energy. I am in the soup is learned this from him. And they invented the drink of water, which today we call coffee. And so even something as simple as coffee was invented by Muslim for religious reasons why he wanted to wake up with the hydrogen, what's the best thing to keep you up to hydrate and to give you that kick to make sure you

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will leak coffee, Muslims invented coffee for a religious reason. And that shows again that in every aspect of life, from the simplest of things to the most grandest of things, Muslims of the past did not regard religion and worldly knowledge as separate. Everything from algebra to coffee to soap were all invented for religious reasons. In Islamic Spain, the great Muslim musicians in Syria, he invented soup, then called sub wound in Arabic. Why did he invent soap? Because of the hygiene of the horror chatroom, the man that cleanliness is half of it, please, on this Heidi's invented soap, so people can be even more clean. So my main message today brothers is that we must stop separating

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religious and Islamic knowledge. We must stop thinking somebody is either religious or they are experts in medicine, someone's either religious or they can become a great accountant. No, we must become people who are experts in everything. Right? We must become people who are deeply connected to Allah while still excel in whatever field we go into. Whether it's business, whether it's entrepreneurship, whether it's medicine, with a psychology, we must be people who love Allah, we're connected to Allah who understand his religion, and still excited dunya. If we want to have a golden age, again, if you want to reach a point in time where Muslims are influential again, we have to go

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back to the system that worked. And the system that worked is that there is no separation between worldly and religious knowledge. All beneficial knowledge belongs to the believer, right? In Islam, we don't have secular knowledge and Islamic knowledge, we have beneficial knowledge and non beneficial knowledge. If something's beneficial, a Muslim Muslim, if something's not beneficial, you put it aside example of not beneficial knowledge is memorizing the name of every sports player and the whole history that's not beneficial, right, but beneficial knowledge, anything that can benefit humanity. Muslims should study it, and they should study from an Islamic perspective. And they

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should make it something where they approach it when Islamic lens and they excel in it because of that. And if we do this, we can influence this world we can change this world we can become leaders of this world again, just like in the past, Muslims invented algebra invented coffee they invented so they invented with medical tools and medical colleges and so many different things. We too can be like that again. If we just go back to the simple system which is balance between Deen and dunya. And to not neglect Allah says in the Quran was at 10 sublessee becoming atonia Don't forget your portion of this video. Don't forget it. Right and you end up by reminding ourselves about the

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important what Allah teaches us in the Quran. Allah told us in the Quran, there are some people who say Oh Allah give us the best of this world and they forget about Africa. Allah says instead say Robert artina, Jr. Has Anna Warfield asked him what he has enough working. Our Lord give us the best of this world and the next world and see what's on the hot fire. This is the balance that we are talking about. Best of this world best of network. Let's go back to being people like that. Walking down. 111 European Ireland