Code of Conduct #8 Honesty in Dawah

Salam alaykum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh Alhamdulillah wa salatu salam ala Rasulillah. So today, we are going to look at the importance of honesty in Dawa honesty. Why I mean the next video we are going to look look at the importance of courage in Dawa. And I want you to think about these qualities in pairs. So wisdom and compassion go together. Right? You need wisdom and compassion, compassion to do Dawa. Similarly, intentions and knowledge go together. You have to do it for the sake of Allah and you have to know what you're talking about. o'clock will either go together. That's why I put them as one chapter. Likewise, honesty and courage go together. Because in many

situations, it takes courage to be honest.

And so you can't have one without the other.

And Islam is the religion of turret. When you are calling people to the true religion of God.

That is a religion established by the one true God as the one true religion sent to the true prophet, who was known for his honesty and truthfulness. You cannot lie about what the religion is, or what the teachers

and this may seem like, obvious, right? It's obvious you're doing Dawa, you have to speak the truth.

But over the years, I've noticed many people who lie to themselves and lie to others when doing the Dawa, whether they do it knowingly or unknowingly.

And so, today, I want to talk a bit about the importance of honesty,

in the religion itself, in the Dawa, the importance of wisdom and courage in how we are being honest. Right, the importance of wisdom in how we express ourselves and word ourselves. And finally, the quality of honesty itself, as Dawa meaning, being an honest person should make your very existence Dawa towards others

that people should see you and see how honest you are and that should attract them towards Islam.

So we know that this religion is built upon truth, Allah subhanaw taala refers to it as Al Hawk the truth many times.

And he told us in the Quran, that truth vanquishes falsehood, truth overcomes lies. And the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam told us to be truthful. He said that speaking the truth and leads to righteousness and righteousness leads to paradise and speaking lies leads to sins and sins leads to the hellfire. So we know that our religion is a true religion of God which emphasizes the importance of being honest and truthful individuals. And there are very few situations where lying is permissible or tolerated, simply because there'd be a greater evil

in not doing so in those situations white it's only when it's the lesser of two evils and it's allowed. The general default norm of a believer is to be honest and truthful. And we know that Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was known for his honesty and truthfulness even before Islam.

That this was the reputation that he had established throughout his life. Think about the wisdom in Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam receiving prophethood at the age of 40. By the age of 40, you have already built up your reputation and your resume, people know who you are. They know what you stand for. You have a whole adult life of two decades of experience, to showcase to people of who you are

Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam from a very young age. He was a showcase of integrity and honesty and trustworthiness until he is very the names he was known by in the community reflected his honesty and trustworthiness. And

this is why when he received prophethood immediately, people like Khadija Rajala Abu Bakr, Radi Allahu anhu, Ali ibn Abi Taalib Rajala, one who, and they they even heard that regular immediately. They all accepted Islam, because they knew him. They knew he was an honest person. They knew He is someone who would never lie. So why on earth after 40 years of never lying, when he suddenly stopped lying about God and about religion, when you can cost him everything in this world for doing so.

And so the

Monastery of Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was his Dawa.

And this was one of his proofs of Prophethood that he was that honest, that he, it wouldn't have made any sense for him to start learning so late in life, about something so important. Another example of this we see in the famous story of the conversation between Iraklis and Abu Sufian. By the way, the story needs to be studied on its own from a Darwinian perspective, and even from a proofs of Prophethood perspective, because it is a truly fascinating story of it a Roman Christian, interrogating a Moroccan pagan, about the character of the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, and then coming to the conclusion that he has all the signs of a true prophet. So this the

story behind this story is that he rattly as the emperor of the Byzantium Empire, was in India constant duniya, which is Jerusalem, right? The Holy Land, and he receives a letter from Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam calling him towards Islam. So he asks, is there anyone around who knows this man, and Abu Sufian happened to be in town for business? Anyone a Muslim? Yeah, this was during the time of hostility between Islam and Abu should be up. And he's in town for business. And he gets called to the call of the Byzantium Emperor himself and interrogated about the personality and character of Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, and as a result of this interrogation, I will

Soufiane starts to become inclined towards Islam, and will eventually accept Islam and become one of the sahaba. But when you look at the questions that he rapidly is asked Abu Sofia, to assess the character of the man claiming to be a prophet. One of the first questions he asked was, Has he ever lied before this? Has he ever lied before this? And abusive Young said, No, we know him to be a person of honesty. And he roughly is replied, If he doesn't lie about this world, why would he lie about God? If he doesn't lie about money? If he doesn't lie about power? He doesn't live or reputation? Why would the first thing he starts telling a lie about be something so important and so

crucial and so significant? You see people who claim to be prophets, historically, obviously, after Rasulullah, sallAllahu, alayhi, wasallam, they cannot be any true prophet, anyone after that, who claims to be a prophet is by default, a liar and need a job. But historically, people who claim to be prophets would either be the best of people who ended up being the true prophets, or the worst of people, because what kind of person lies about God? What kind of person lies about Revelation? What kind of person lies about being a prophet, only the absolute worst of the woods, people who aren't even afraid of facing God on judgment day for their lives? And so the

rationale given by abuse by Heroclix, Sophia, as to how can this man be lying about God is that he hadn't lied about anything in this world. And so his honesty, again, was the proof of Prophethood the proof that he was indeed, the true prophet. And this is why he was known as I mean, the trustworthy.

And even after he claimed prophethood, and people rejected his message, they still trusted him, and they still kept their wealth with him.

And he still took any promises he made very seriously because they knew this was a man who does not lie.

In fact, those who knew him to be honest, and recognize with him his prophethood the only reason some of them rejected His message was out of their own arrogance, or tribalism, or jealousy.

Not because they saw in him any signs of a false prophet. And so he was known for his honesty. Now.

What's this got to do with us and the Dawa today?

Well, there's two sides to this on one side.

Some of us need to work in general, on our own character, and part of working on our own character is that we become more honest people.

Unfortunately, we live in a time where in many parts of the world, Muslims are known for their dishonesty, for their corruption, for the bribery for cheating in business, not saying everyone's like this, but there are communities where Muslims are known for this. And the prophets of Allah while he was prophesized that the first thing to be taken away from this ummah, in terms of their religion is trustworthiness. The one of the signs of the Day of Judgment is the Muslim stop being trustworthy, which was unheard of

For the other years in the early years, it was the honesty of the believers that was their Dawa. That you would meet a Muslim, and find it to be the most honest and trustworthy of people. And that would be reason enough

to, to consider this religion to be something special, and to want to follow this religion. But over time, especially in the past 200 years, a lot of this honesty has crept into the Muslim world. And a lot of people these days, don't think of it as a big deal to lie. So they lie about many different things. You know, people have hold secret lives and secret families, and they have two completely different personalities. And, you know, they may be the most violent and abusive of people in private. And the most pious of people in public, I'm not saying everyone's like this don't don't don't go around passing judgments on people based on what I'm seeing. I'm seeing this for self

reflection purposes, right? We all need to reflect on this and ask ourselves, Am I a truly honest individual? Do I lie to the people around me? My family, my employees, my employer, my coworkers, my customers? Am I know in my community as somebody that can be trusted? If not, we have a long way to go. Before we become examples of prophetic truthfulness, the honesty that our prophets lie some was a model of and then we are supposed to follow in the footsteps of

more importantly, let's talk about honesty in Dawa. So, again, historically,

this is not been a problem, right? Historically, people would ask about Islam and Muslims would say what Islam is and what the teachers, unfortunately, this problem did develop in a post 911 world.

Right? So before 911, Muslims were very honest about Islam and teaching Islam. In a post 911 world, where there was a lot of pressure

on Muslims living as minorities in the West, especially to portray Islam as something that has absolutely nothing to do with any type of violence.

There was distortion of the religion. And there was a

sense of lying about what Islam teaches, in order to make Islam more acceptable to the masses. Not saying Islam is a violent religion,

but there is

room for controlled unjustified violence in Islam. You see,

we need to be honest about Islamic teachings on certain topics. And

we have found that many people

who are doing Dawa

are afraid to be honest about these topics for a number of reasons. Number one, on certain topics, being honest about it could get you into legal trouble if you're living in certain parts of the world. Number two, being honest about certain topics may lose who your audience instead of certain parts of the world. Right. So just to give you some examples of these topics, where some Muslims have a dishonest approach, and sometimes it's not even intentional, sometimes they just honest with themselves, right? If you look at the concept of jihad,

this is something that

Muslims shy away from

the concept that our religion has Fick or laws governing combat and military campaigns.

And you need post 911 world, we found a lot of emphasis on jihad, meaning jihad of the nafs. Or Jihad means any kind of struggle and people saying things like oh to smilies jihad or to deal with your hardships is jihad and they just completely took this word away from what it means in the classical books of Fick and history. Because rarely, if you're honest with yourself, if you read a book or fake if you read a history book, jihad is almost exclusively used to refer to warfare. Furthermore, in distorting the religion, to make it more acceptable to Westerners. Even when the topic of military Jihad comes up, some Muslims

would claim that jihad is only defensive, it's only defensive. So Islam only has the concept of defensive war. That's what they would say.

And this is a lie. This is a distortion of the religion.

Islam does have a concept of jihad of expansion, expanding the borders of the Empire.

by taking over a nearby land, this is something that's built into the religion.

And this is what the Sahaba did when they went into Syria, and Egypt and Palestine, and Iraq. This was not defensive jihad. Medina wasn't attacked by the person teams and the Persians. This was expensive jihadi, with expanding the borders of the Empire.

Now,

we have the problem today

that instead of being honest about this, people change the religion

where wisdom comes in, is how you explain it and explain the wisdom behind it. There is no need to try and distort the teachings of Islam.

Islam was very clear on these issues, you can explain the wisdom, right? Why in Islam, a religion having military components? Well, there's multiple reasons. Number one, Islam is a way of life, it has to have rules governing every aspect of life. And that includes how you rule an empire. And if someone is ruling an empire, according to your religion, then of course, the religion has to have rules governing combat and military campaigns. Right? So I wanna say, Oh, why not just defensive? Well, realistically, and historically, war has never been just defensive. That's a very modern concept. That's a very new desert, any new concept in history. Historically, there were no set

borders of empires of countries, every country was at war with a nearby country, and they will be expanding the borders into each other's lands through winning or losing military campaigns. This was the nature of the world for the bulk of human history. Islam had to have rules the governance, because if Muslims did not have a means of expanding the borders of the Empire, the other empires would expand into their lands and overtake them.

Because the way the world was, for the bulk of history, it was conquer or be conquered. That's how the world was conquer or be conquered. So if the Muslims did not have a system of conquering and taking over these lands, then it would have been within 100 years Muslims would have been wiped out by the Persians or the Romans, eventually,

it is necessary for any religion or empire that wanted to survive most points in human history, that they have a method of expanding the Empire.

Furthermore, Islam has the most just rules of warfare, you only allowed to target enemy combatants. If they asked for peace, you give them peace, if you conquer land, the people of that land, they pay a very small tax in the remain upon the religions and in most cases, they even allowed to judge amongst themselves based on their own religion. When you look at all of this, compared to almost any other Empire existed all points in time, the Islamic system is the most just so Why lie about it. Why lie there is no such thing as expensive jihad. It's all defensive. This is lying about the religion what happens when you lie in doing Dawa people convert to Islam based on a lie, and later

on, when they discover the truth, there is a chance that they might leave the religion.

Sophia Allah do not lie about his religion, speak the truth. Be honest, tallied as it is, but explain the wisdom, be compassionate and wise in how you explain it, but don't distort the teachings themselves. Another example of when and how people do this is regarding slavery. Right? Again, you'll hear this distorted idea coming from these Landry, Muslims and minorities, and specifically lands with slavery is seen as the worst thing that humans have ever done, because of their history of our history. Your Muslim saying things like oh, Islam is completely against slavery, it's completely haram. The Prophet says, I'm freed slaves. And again, this is a partial truth, not a

total truth. Because the reality is, our Sharia does not explicitly prohibit a human being from owning another human being. He does not rather, if there is a war, and people are taken as captives in that war, it is completely within the bounds of the Sharia and completely permissible in the Sharia, for those people to become owned property of the people who conquered them. This is something that Islam is very clear about this consensus amongst the scholars about this. Now, is this a necessary part of the religion that has to be practiced in every time

Please, no, you can be a practicing Muslim well yet, it's just that this was a necessary part of life and war for the bulk of human history. So again, Islam needed rules to govern it. And what Islam did was provide the most humane system of treatment of own people that humanity has ever seen the most humane system, where the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam said that your slaves are your brothers, feed them from what you eat, clothe them from what you wear, and do not overwork them, where the Muslim community was such that a slave could take its owner to court for abusing them, or physically assaulting them, that they had rights to be treated with dignity, to be treated with

respect. And because of this, we find that the history of slavery in the Muslim world was radically different from the history of slavery in the West, what they are doing is projecting their understanding of slavery on the rest of the world.

So, even though this is something that many Western Muslims would grapple with accepting,

if you are being honest about a religion, Islam does not see the ownership of a human being by another human being as immoral in of itself. It does not

right, going even further into something that people dislike today when doing Dawa.

If you want to be completely honest, in your Dawa, not only does Islam not see the ownership of human beings as immoral. In Islam, a intimate sexual relationship between a man and his female slave is completely permissible, completely permissible in the Quran, in the Hadith by consensus of the scholars.

Right, it's completely permissible. There's nothing immoral about it in Islam.

Again, this is something difficult for people to understand today. So you have to explain it with wisdom. But yes, there's a key point. You have to explain it with wisdom, not do away with it, or pretend it doesn't exist or change the religion.

And I have found that these aspects of what Islam teaches have been distorted so much, and lied about so much. That when you present people with what Islam actually teaches many Muslims like No, that can't be true. My whole life. I've done it differently.

But anyone reads a book of fake can see that this is what Islam teaches.

And it's important when you're doing Dawa, that you begin with explaining the Islamic worldview. I will believe in God, I believe in messengers, I will believe in morality and laws coming from God that God created us and He knows what is best for us. Islam does not need to match up with Western ideas of moral immoral. It has its own system of working out moral immoral, in which we don't work on what's moral or immoral, Allah decides what's moral and immoral, and the sight of God. These things which the West considers immoral in the sight of God, they are completely fine.

Of course, we have the opposite as well. They are things considered completely fine in the West that are completely immoral and evil in the sight of God, from drinking alcohol, to gambling to fornication, and adultery.

Two, of course, the modern alphabet movements. These are things which are clearly prohibited in Islam.

So understand, when you're doing Dawa, you're going to be dealing with people whose sense of morality is flipped from yours. They are things that are morally acceptable in Islam, that are completely immoral in their worldview, and they are things that are immoral. According to Islam, they are completely fine in their worldview. And that's why your Dawa has to go back to basics. It has to be on the oneness of God, the approval of Prophethood the Quran being a true Word of God, morality, being from God, this is what needs to be emphasized in the Dawa. If this is what is emphasized in the Dawa, these other things become secondary, because once somebody accepts once

somebody accepts that there is no God besides Allah and Muhammad Salah ism is the Messenger of Allah, and you have to be Allah and His Messenger, then they will have no problem submitting to the laws of Allah and following that instead of the liberal worldview.

So this is one side of distortions, right where

people are worried that Islam doesn't match with the Western understanding of right and wrong. So they change the teachings of Islam to make it more acceptable to Westerners. This is extremely dangerous, extremely problematic, and this is lying about the religion which is

Isn't, there's another side to this as well,

within Muslim circles, sometimes Muslims are this honest about the teachings of Islam, because they don't want to lose the audience, or they don't want to lose their job, or they don't want to upset people. And so they will tell people what they want to hear, rather than what they need to hear.

So you need to remember an important principle in Islam. Detroit, is butter,

the throat is butter. Very often, what you need to tell people, Muslim or non Muslim

is something they don't want to hear.

And your job as the di e is to say it anyway, you say it in wisdom, you say good compassion. But you have to say it, you can't hide the truth. Because you don't want to hurt someone's feelings. That's not how you do down.

And, you know, a common example of this in modern society is hiding the truth about

issues relating to gender.

Right there in Islam, there are some very clear differences in the roles that men and women play in society. And they are very clear differences in the roles they play in marriage.

But many of you are today will downplay these differences, or explain the way these Hadees or say, Oh, you don't need to follow that you can just follow the culture of your land. And they will try to downplay this side of the religion, because they don't want to upset audience members who may be influenced by feminism. And in doing so, they are doing a disservice to the religion and the audience. Because you're not giving people the full picture of what Islam teaches. And every single teaching of Islam in these areas, every single one of these teachings are crucial for society functioning properly, you hide any of these teachings, then you are creating a half picture that is

going to give you half baked results. And that's what we're seeing in marriages in the West. People being raised with misunderstandings about what marriage is, and what are the roles of people in marriage. Because of this, they end up going into marriage with not wrong understandings and wrong expectations. And the marriage falls apart because they don't even know what their responsibilities are in a marriage. And it's not just when it comes to marriage that people are afraid of speaking the truth. That will be more with the female audience with a male audience. The best example is selling haram right having haram transactions and dealing with riba these are the topics that men

don't like to talk about.

Because reality is a lot of men these days are involved in Haram transactions and involved in rebar. But as the donkey as the preacher as the Imam as the chef, your job is to speak the truth regardless of the consequences. And yes, this may mean that people will get angry with you, if you remind men to keep the income Hello, they may get angry with you. If you remind me not to get involved in rebar based transactions, they may get angry with you. But so what I know in some cases people may even lose their jobs. Or in some cases, people may get stopped being invited to speak at specific Masjid. So what your job is not to please the people, your job is to convey the message of Islam, which

and these are the two topics within the Muslim community that rile up people the most. Talk about marriage or talk about everybody, right marriage and interest. These are the two things that will get you the most hate. And that's fine. Let people hate your job is to speak the truth.

So we have established that one of the principles of Dawa is to be honest and to be truthful and to be straightforward. If someone asks you What does Islam say about this or teach about this, you should be honest, you should not distort or hide the message of Islam. This is good manual element. This is the concealment of knowledge which is a major sin. And this is distorting the religion which is a major sin. You should be honest, but that honesty should be coaxed with wisdom and compassion. understand their perspective understand how to explain the wisdom behind Islamic law to them understand how to take them on a journey to understand where Islam is coming from and why Islam as

the specific rulings? Yes, the wisdom should be involved in all of that. But wisdom does not mean that you change the teachings of Islam or lie about the teachings of Islam. No Wisdom means you know how to word yourself in a way

They understand why Islam says what it says. And for almost any topic, there is a way to do this. This is an art. It goes back to hikma to wisdom and Rama compassion, there is a art to speaking, that we all need to learn. And we all need to incorporate it into our dialogue.

So make sure when you're doing Dawa, you're honest about the teachings of Islam with yourself and with others, and that you do not distort the message of Islam, just to because you don't want to lose your audience, or you don't want to hurt somebody's feelings, or because you want to make Islam more acceptable to a specific crowd. That's not how it works. Islam is what it is. And Islam is the true religion of God. And there's nothing about in Islam that we should be ashamed of, or hideaway. The teachings or the teachings or facts are the facts, tell it like it is but be wise and compassionate in how and when you do it. And one last point, is ensure that your character and your

personality is one of honesty and truthfulness not just in your Dawa. But in your daily dealings as well. How you interact with people, how you deal with your family, how you deal with your co workers, how you deal with neighbors, you should be a model of honesty and trustworthiness so that people see you they are attracted to the religion, through your trustworthiness that they see in you the clock and the honesty and the integrity of a true believer, and that itself becomes dour, that itself becomes more of a Dawa, than anything you can say. So there's two parts to honesty in doubt. One, be honest about the message, the other your honesty is your message. Be honest about the

message, your honesty is your message. And if we do this, then Insha Allah, there will be Baraka in our Dawa and we will be able to, to attract true converts to the religion who know exactly what they are getting into, rather than attracting people who have been lied to and who are joining a religion that is different from what people told them to Sophia Allah and never lie about what Islam teaches. were accurate Awana and your hamdulillahi rabbil Alameen