Jumah Khutbah – 18 November 2017 at Ridge Road Musalla, Durban, South Africa
Ismail Kamdar – Social Media in Light of Surah Al-Hujarat Part 1
AI: Summary ©
The importance of social media for avoiding harm is discussed, including guidelines on how to use it in a way that is acceptable to individual and their families. The need for verifying information and respecting different Muslims is emphasized, along with the importance of avoiding breaking the bonds of brotherhood and avoiding offense in social media. The importance of avoiding false information and sharing it online is also emphasized, as it can damage one's reputations and lead to war. The speaker provides five verses from the Quran and emphasizes the need to be aware of the "offensive" meaning and avoid offense in social media.
AI: Transcript ©
Salam Alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu
100 elektrobit alameen wa salatu wa salam O Allah Karim. While he was happy he ultramarine will begin by creating a lawsuit by hand over to Allah and asking Allah to send his peace and blessings upon the final prophet Mohammed Abdullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and all those who follow his way with righteousness until the last day.
So today I have chosen a topic which is very, very important for the times we are living in and I hope we have enough time to complete the topic. If not, inshallah I will split this over to dramas.
The topic of chosen is to discuss our usage of social media, in light of Surah alhaja rot. And to begin, I just want to explain why I have chosen social media and why choosing this specific surah. Right, so why social media, social media for those who are unaware, it refers to any technological app or website that's used for socializing this useful communication. Right. So it refers to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google, glass, WhatsApp, all of this is considered social media. And it can be very tempting to pass a fatwa, you know, people want a blanket fatwa, you know, they they come up to you and ask you is social media Haram, you know, is Facebook Haram. And it's really not
appropriate to pass a blanket fatwa on the entire concept like this. Because these are tools. And like any other tool, it can be used for halal or haram. It can be used for good or bad. So you cannot take a tool. You cannot take a knife or a gun or a speed and just say this is heroin because someone uses it for heroin. That's not how it works. Right. In fact, we have a principle that's agreed upon by all the math hubs, which governs our usage of worldly things. And that principle in Arabic, it's called Alibaba to ashlea. Which translates into English as the original ruling on anything is halal? Is MOBA is possibility, right? This is a principle agreed upon by the majority of
scholars are fit across all Muslims, which means when there's something new of this world, which we do not have a direct verse or Hadees about, it is assumed to be hollow, unless there is evidence that it is Herat. So the same will apply to social media, that in of itself, it is a halau tool. It can be used for harm. There's no doubt about that there are people who use the social media for immorality of Xena for cheating for scamming, you know, for backbiting for slander, but there are also people who use it to stay connected with family and friends on the other end of the world. There's nothing wrong about that. There are people who use it for businesses nothing haram about
that. And there are people who use it for that one, there is definitely nothing wrong about that. So social media has become a part of human life. Wherever you go in the world.
Whichever home you visit, you will find members of that home who are using some form of social media or the other. So what we really need is not a fatwa, is it halal or haram. What we need are guidelines on how to use it in a way that is acceptable to Allah subhanho wa Taala because this is really what Islam came to teach us. Islam did not come to teach us that everything is haram or Everything needs a fatwa. No Islam came to teach us that for most of the things in this world. They are guidelines on how to keep its usage Halla.
If you own a car, you can use their car to go to a casino or you can use the car to go to a Masjid. It doesn't make the chapala O'Hara it is your usage that matters. And that's what we're going to look at today we are going to look at a very important to Raka Cora and we are going to take principles from the surah and apply it to our usage of social media and beyond. So that when you are online when you are on Facebook when you are on Youtube, when you are on WhatsApp, you will govern your usage according to the principle thought industry.
And the sooner I've chosen for this specific discussion is Surah hoogenraad, the 49th in the Quran.
Now, you may wonder is 114 students in the Quran? Why this surah specifically, to answer that question this very brief background about the Surah Surah Al hoogenraad is a Medina and surah and the sutras revealed in Medina will reveal to teach people
And o'clock and the guidance, the guidelines for society. And Surah gerat specifically, was revealed to teach the Sahaba how to interact with each other, how to socialize in a way that is acceptable.
And so, in many of the books of the seal, this Torah is also referred to by a different name surah, Allah, the surah about good character and good manners, because in the surah, which is made up of only 18 verses, you will find guidelines for every form of socialization, every aspect of socializing in your life, you will find guidelines going into law.
And this is why I believe it is very important that every Muslim home
must study through law, it is not enough to attend a Juma lecture on this era, you need to take this Judah home, you need to sit and really do what needs translation with your families, and discuss its meanings with your families and how you can apply it to your life. Because this Torah is crucial for solving many of the social problems of the oma. And that includes the problems we have when it comes to social media.
So I'm going to take just five verses from the Quran, he actually 18 verses in total. And I hope afterwards, when you go home, you will open the surah and read the full 18 verses with the translation and reflect on them. But specifically,
I believe that there are five verses here which are crucial when it comes to social media based on the problems I'm seeing as of late. This to give you an idea recently, I went through many of the South African Facebook groups, right the reading the kinds of comments and discussions that take place. And based on what I've seen, in those discussions, I've realized that these five verses in particular, we need to discuss with our communities, our people need to know about these five verses, and we need to apply it and how we use social media because there are a lot of things that we are doing wrong. So let's start with verse number six.
Verse number six applies again to every bit of socializing in our life. What I want to talk about is application to message sharing platforms like WhatsApp, by diverse number six work to handle the data process.
All you who believe. So Allah is is talking to each of us directly. He's about to give a command to each of us directly, because without each of us here upon those who believe, oh, you will believe in
another In fact,
if someone who is sinful, comes to you with information about someone else, very find it very funny, to a command in the Quran. And to see Boko mumbi Jonathan Patricia de who Allah
if you don't verify, you may harm someone ignorantly and regretted tomorrow.
Again, Allah subhanho wa Taala commands us with euro Puja, oh believers, if someone brings you information about somebody else verified, because if you don't verify it, you could have people in ignorance, and you may regret it tomorrow.
I want us to think about this verse. And the kinds of messages we share and forward on WhatsApp and other social media platforms almost every week,
someone or the other will send me a message. And I'll ask them, did you verify it?
And they will reply, no, but he came from another Muslim, so it must be true.
Then the same person after sending it out to hundreds of contacts, will send us all a message One hour later, saying sorry, the message I sent earlier is fake. And I only learned about that now.
And by the need to really reach 1000s of people.
And that same person will repeat the same mistake One week later. And another week later. And in the same false message that went out in 2008 via email goes out in 2017. Via WhatsApp as if it is breaking news.
What's going on now communities what's going on is that we are reactionary and we are very emotional. So if someone sends us a message saying that a certain Muslim restaurant is haram,
without even taking before the to everybody on our contact list, while all we had to do was pick up the phone, phone, your restaurant, or better yet, go there visited meet the owner and ask them if it's true or not.
90% of the time it's life 90% of the time, that message was made by a competitor who wants people not to go to his competitions business.
But instead of verifying, we send out messages, we damage people's reputations, we damage people's business, we then damage people's lives, because we're very quick to press the forward button without verify. So Allah commands us in the Quran, but they are new verify it. Is it true?
This goes for the sharing of Heidi's as well. There are so many WhatsApp messages and emails and Facebook messages going around that are full of fabricated abuses.
Do we not understand that sharing a fabricated Hades is lying against the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam it is a major sin. It is a kabyle
to lie about what the prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam said, you get a hadith. Ask your local Buddha or chef is this Hadees authentic. That's all you got to do. And they will leave. And then you can decide whether you should forward it or not. So verify whether it's information about a local business, whether it's news about global politics, whether it's information or somebody else's honor, whether it's a Hadees, whether it's a fatwa, whatever it is, before you press forward, verified. And if you are too lazy to verify it, then be even more lazy to forward it. Don't follow it.
Because it is better not to send out the message than to send out unverified information.
So this verse is very important. I want us to take this verse, and to share this to social media. Send this verse out to all your contacts, showing them that Allah has commanded you in the Quran to verify information before forwarding it. And you know why this verse was revealed. This verse was revealed because the entire village or community was almost executed because of a false message.
One of the Sahaba was supposed to go and collect the soccer from a group of Muslims. In a small village, they were Bedouins didn't understand the culture of the Muslims, yet they were still getting accustomed to Islam. And so when he was approaching the village, he saw some of them outside with a weapons. Now in that village, their culture was to greet people with weapons. And this man from Medina will, in their culture, if you see a group of people with weapons, you think they're coming to attack you.
So when he saw this group of people with weapons, he went back, and he told the Prophet sallallahu Sallam that those people have left Islam and are coming to attack us.
And the practice was done, was ready to go and fight those people. And there was going to be an entire war. But Allah prevented that war by revealing this verse
that prevented the woman even in this verse, understand what I'm saying, this is a true incident from the life of the Prophet alayhi wa sallam, and verified information can lead to wars.
That's how serious it is.
So when it comes to the messages that we are people are floating around, either verified, only send it out when you know it is 100% true, or don't send it out at all.
The next verse I want to discuss is verse number 10.
In number we knew that
the believers are all brothers to each other. There are believers have a stronger bond to each other than your bond with your physical data. We have the bond of man,
understand this, the Brotherhood of faith is supposed to be stronger than the Brotherhood of blood.
Why?
Because if you have a blood brother who is not a Muslim, and you have somebody else who is a Muslim, they both have rights over you. But the Muslim has even more rights.
Because that's how strong the Brotherhood of faith is, in order for us to being equal. So always always reconcile and make peace when your brothers are fighting with each other. Meaning what you see two Muslims arguing with each other, whether it's on YouTube videos, whether it's on Facebook, whether it's on Twitter, whether it's in your whatsapp group, your job as their brother, the brother to both of them, not one of them, your brother to go to them. Your
job as the Brother, don't feel the flames. Don't make things worse. Don't add spices to the stories, though sit back with your popcorn and watch ously omega be the one who makes peace between be the voice of reason amongst them. Be the one who told them to calm down be the one who tells them, let's not fight about the issue. Let's discuss it in a civilized way.
And let's face it, when it comes to Muslim social media today is always drama. It will always fight. Someone shares a fatwa from the Alfredo molana on Facebook and somebody else who has a different favorite moulana with a different fatwa against and really starts fighting with him. Why can't we respect both? What was a boat coming from qualified authorities? The boat, the qualified, he heard of a scholar? So why can't we respect that he came to a different conclusion, then the argument I follow? Why can't we have that respect for different factors. Instead, we want to fight people and call them names. And we come to that in the detail first in the same surah there is a provision of
name calling.
A prohibition of name calling. I want to think about how you think about the messages we send out to each other. You know, someone's in the photo we don't like we call him a coffee. Right? Firstly, you know, I would think we we've grasped how serious it is to call another Muslim.
The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said that will ever tells his brother that you are a coffee. And it's not true, it becomes true for you. He says it becomes true for one of the two. If he's not the copier, then you are basically doing an act of blasphemy by calling a believer.
No, we accuse people of having hidden agendas, or you just making a fatwa because it suits you enough. How do you know what's in his heart? Maybe he honestly believes in it. But what? Why do we assume the worst? No, we get really angry with each other. And this leads to entire communities fighting each other. And then the community wants to break up. And then you want to have too much to do instead of one. And then you want to have you know, two separate sources of fatwas. And then you want to have two separate schools? Where does again, where does the breaking up? Rather, remember, in minoo,
every believer is your brother. If you meet someone who believes in the five pillars of Islam, and the six pillars of whatever differences you have beyond that, you have to treat that individual as your brother,
you have to respect them as your brother, you have to love them as your brother. And when you differ with them. You differ with them in a way that does not break the Brotherhood. You tell him I don't agree with that opinion. It doesn't affect the fact that I love you and my brother in Islam, I just don't agree with your opinion on that specific issue. And that's okay. It's okay to disagree. What's not okay is to break the bonds of brotherhood over these disagreements. So our brothers, our believe the believers are our brothers. And I don't think many of us have realized what that means. On a, you know, on our daily level.
In Islam, it is prohibited to break ties with your brothers with your family. And it's also prohibited to break ties with other Muslims who are not part of your physical family. Why? Because we are your brothers in Islam.
But today we break ties over every little thing.
Wherever you go, there are Muslims who are boycotting this Muslim is not speaking to this person anymore. The prophets lie some told us you are not allowed to be angry with and to break up with another believer for more than three days. Meaning Islam gives us a 3d cooling off period, you had to fight that happens between God and sometimes you have three days to cool off, to ask the person for forgiveness. And to get get back to being civil with each other. You don't have to be best friends, be civil with each other.
You have three days to do that. If you go beyond that you are now sinful, you are sinful for breaking the bonds of brotherhood in Islam.
So be very careful about this issue.
The next three verses all come one after the other and they essentially list for us the prohibitions when it comes to our social interactions. So in the next two verses, there is a list of six prohibitionists.
Each of these apply to our interaction in person and they apply just as much going into action online.
Verse 11, there are three prohibitions. The first one is walking summer. The second one is defamation of character. And the third one is the prohibition of calling people by nicknames that they do not like. A lot of a handle without a call, just diversity.
Yeah.
Oh you believe ob leavers, okay unless talking to us directly. He's about to make something haram for us, meaning whatever comes next, it is in the command for me to
learn just for owning owning a
home.
No people, no group of people should look down upon or mock any other group of people, why
they may be better than you in the sight of Allah. They may be better than you in the sight of Allah.
And no group of women should mock another group of women because they may be better than you in the sight of Allah.
While that doesn't mean do unto soco and do not defame each other, do not assassinate each other's character do not violate the honor of each other. While at the Naboo bill, build a pub and do not call people by lockup is by nicknames that they detest. Do not call people by nicknames that they dislike.
Because it's muku cavada how evil it is to call someone by an evil nickname after they have demand meaning it is evil to call a believer by a nickname that they do not like. Now, there's a lot of fear to discuss in these three verses. But let's try and keep it as simple as possible. The first part of the verse it says we should not walk or look down upon anyone there's two different axes are what's meant by like just performing me for me. One one series, you should not walk anyone. Right what's mockery? mockery is where you laugh at people. You know, you see you know, for example, someone maybe someone doesn't know Islam, right? And they post something which is wrong. And then
you post a comment Haha, you're so stupid. That's mocking people. That's wrong. That's completely wrong. Right talk to a person in that way. That's called mocking the other meaning of life is called comin Coleman is nobody should look down upon anyone else. Meaning a believer should not think on a higher and better than a
cultural enterprise. Do you know who is the first person to say that the first person is the unafraid Robinho shake on? Justice will not shake off. You see someone committing yourself, and you think I'm better than him? Allah says you don't know. You don't know. I mean, he may be better than you. Maybe you saw him doing that once. You don't know the secret good deeds he does. You don't know the Toba? He does. You'll know how hard he tries to give up that sin. You don't know his stages will allow us to have a handle with Allah.
So you have no right to think that you are better than him.
At the same time, you don't know what Allah accepted your good deeds. You're not forgiven your sins. So on what basis do we decide? an affair and the
reality is nobody knows. Only on the Day of Judgment, Allah Subhana Allah will decide who is forgiven and who is not.
So we have no basis of feeling I have visited him I belong to this group and he belongs to that group. I go to this machine and he goes to that Masjid, you know, I will discolor turban he has that color turban. I'm not going to judge Oh, by that it's all about forgiveness or not forgiveness, only Allah knows who's going to forgive. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam said that nobody enters paradise because you will only enter Jannah because of Allah's mercy.
Why did you say this? Because every single human being has since
none of us can say I am worth your paradise. You only gotta get there. If Allah is merciful upon you, our only gonna be merciful upon you if you are merciful to others.
So there is no place in Islam for water, in no place in Islam for looking down upon people.
And this is something which has become very common in the comments section on social media. You know, how we say you tell people to make the comments section haram to me. Because when you read the comments, Muslims write about each other, your mind gets shaken.
People call each other the worst names possible. People walk each other, they laugh at each other, they degrade each other. There's no maturity in the discussion. When you disagree with him. There's nothing wrong with disagreeing and hating you disagree, but do it in a mature and civilized way. There's no need for mockery, when dealing with anybody else's opinions. It never makes things better. It never brings them closer to you. Nobody in the world has ever been rocking said Wow, he's right. I need to be like, I need to be like the guy who
doesn't work is just a very immature way to deal with other people. So nobody should walk anyone else because they may just be petted.
Well, I don't really want to suffer.
We should not assassinate the character of anybody.
This has become a major issue in recent months,
that
someone will post something on Facebook, accusing someone of committing Zina, or even worse. And without verification, the whole Muslim woman shares it, and starts talking about as far as discussing it, as discussing the implications of it. Without any witnesses, without any evidence, without verification, without hearing the other person's side of the story, we just go crazy for gossip, the kind of gossip that ruins the honor of another believer.
And what's also more scary than this in nowadays is that the liberals, the feminists and the the more modern people, they are pushing this idea that if a woman accuses a man, you have to believe her.
This is what they're saying, if you don't believe it, you're a bad person. Which means we are now in a situation where any woman can accuse any man of committing a major sin. And people have to automatically believe it, which goes against the principle of Islam, that people are innocent until proven guilty. We are now living in a society where you are guilty until proven innocent, and entire people's reputations and jobs and endow have been ruined just on this one wrong principle. Remember, in Islam, everybody is innocent until proven guilty.
Well, what's happening? We see one message going out saying that this person is like this, or this person did that, instead of verifying. And he says earlier for the billionaire verify? No, instead of doing that, the whole oma discusses it as if the judgment has already been passed.
Now, I'm not saying in every case, the person is innocent. No, they are cases without doubt with some people are guilty of Major Crimes against the oma and things need to be done about it in the right way. No doubt. But the other cases where people are just saying things because they want to damage someone's reputation. Recently, a very famous scholar was accused of *.
And the person who accused him he's an apostate immortal, who has an agenda against Islam. But people automatically and immediately believed her. Because you have to believe the woman.
This is a serious issue, to just believe these things and to spread them. If we have time in the future, one that needs to be discussed to run on a larger scale these kinds of slander specifically, and what a major sin it is to spread this slander entity but that's a whole separate issue that's covered in a separate suit altogether. And if you have time later, open Toronto and read the translation that's sure as well to see how severe it is to defame the character of another Muslim.
So please be careful. Do not share anything about anyone that is unverified. You can ruin people's lives. The people sitting in jail for 10 years for crimes they did not.
They are people who have been fired from their jobs and forced to live lives of poverty. Because of crimes they did not comment. I recently heard a story about a scholar of Islamic in in the United States of America, the director of his Masjid did not like him. So he spread the slander that this man was molesting a small girl that the mom got fired, he couldn't get a job anywhere else. He had to move away he had to change his name. And he only came up five or 10 years later that the director had just made up a story to get him fired.
This defamation of character is
to see what he does to people. Please be careful. Remember, the Prophet Muslim had said that there are three things about your fellow Muslim that are haram for you.
Their blood, their wealth and their other their blood, meaning it is haram to hurt or kill anyone. They weld around to steal from anyone or to scam them. And we forget number three, the honor, it is haram to defame people and assassinate the character.
The prophecies are listed this in the same list as stealing and murder.
It's just as serious as stealing and murder defamation of character.
The last thing in this verse, Allah subhanho wa Taala now but will be our property not called people by offensive nicknames? Now we need to go into both of the details here because a lot of people miss understand that because I've met a lot of people who think this verse means that to call anyone by any nickname is hierarchical.
Right and that's a complete misunderstanding. Right there.
The word uses are probably to the tune of lack of lack of means a nickname. And even the corpus callosum himself has a laptop. But he's NACA boys. I mean, the trustworthy. So good luck. All right. And we call this a hopper by lockups. He calls his wife Ayesha. kuvira, the one with red cheeks.
He called Abu huraira. His name was actually Abdul Rahman, even sacani, calling Abu huraira the father of the kitten. There was a nickname, right? So this idea that we're not allowed to call anyone by any nickname that that's not from Islam, but it's actually the Sunnah of the Prophet sallahu salaam to use beloved nicknames when talking to people to people who are close to him. He called Abu Bakar a city he called Omar al Farooq. These are names he gave them which are not the birth names, titles and nicknames that he adjusted by the Terms of Endearment. So what this verse is prohibiting is not calling anyone by any nickname is prohibiting offensive nicknames. And the
general principle in Islam is that person you are calling. Are they okay with that name or not?
Meaning, you may have a friend who's a bit overweight, and you call him fatty
now isn't around to call him fatty. The fatwa is dependent on what he feels.
The fatwa is dependent on what he feels. If he's okay with that nickname, and he likes it. It is permissible, if he's offended by the nickname, and we need to be honest with you about this. Now, if you're offended by the nickname, whatever the nickname is, to call anyone by a nickname that offends them, it is haram for you to call them by the nickname it is haram to call them by a nickname that offends them. Because this is in a prohibition for me this tura wallet and now valuable alcohol Do not call people by offensive nicknames. This is in a nice hands. It is in the prohibition tense. It is heroin. So the heroin and heroin, when it comes to nicknames comes down to one simple thing, that
person you are calling by that name, does he like it or not. And here, I want to adjust especially the younger generation, the school kids, many of us in school, we get into the habit of calling each other by nicknames. And sometimes the other person doesn't like it. Right? But he's scared to say that because everybody's calling even the teachers call you by their nickname.
So you have to honestly ask a question you can tell me personally, do you like it when we call you by this name or not? And if he says no, then you need to stop calling him by that name. And you need to get the rest of the school Stop calling me by that name as well. I have seen so many people who go through the entire childhood, being called by nicknames that crush the confidence that crush their soul is really really make them cry when they are alone.
But nobody cares. Everybody calls him by those names. To call them by their name even after they've grown up.
You know from Islam, right? We call people by their real name, or by a name that they like, we do not call them by a name that is offensive to them. So is it anyone in your life? Do you have a nickname for?
Ask them Honestly? Whether they are okay, would you call him by that name? And if you're okay with it, continue? If they are not okay with it, stop.
How does this apply to social media? You just have to go to the comment section. Right everybody in the comment section is caffeine. deviant. Wahhabi is that stupid idiot. Nothing but offensive nicknames. When people have no arguments, they tend to tunicates they tend to offend the other person. That language has no place on the tongue, or the keyboard of the medieval times in the past, we see the tongue or the pen. Unfortunately, most of us don't use things anymore. So on the tongue or the keyboard of the believer, don't type things that's available sugar nation with a thumb because you are just as responsible to Allah for what you type
as you are to Allah for what I'm saying. Do not use offensive nicknames. If someone posts something online that you disagree with this, I agree with you in a mature and civilized way, is never ever a need to call someone an idiot. There's never ever a need to call someone stupid. There's never room for that. That's a very childish way to deal with your differences to other people.
As I said, we're not going to have enough time to go through the entire
surah and just go to verses which I really need to discuss in detail. So inshallah the next time I'm presenting the Juma lecture at this Masjid, I will continue on the same topic in both verses 12 and 13. which deal with very, very important topic for our time, suspicion, spying on people in Ukraine into people's private lives backbiting and verse 13, dealing with racism, all of these things
very crucial issues which are popping up all over our social media accounts, so we have to discuss them in detail. I want to end with a very simple message to all of you.
The Quran is a guideline for every aspect of our life. And that includes Facebook, that includes Twitter that includes YouTube, that includes WhatsApp, that includes everything.
Take the surah take the time to read it, to read the translation to read the Tafseer to teach it to your families to discuss it with your families. You find a good video online discussing it or good audio online discussing it or article online discussing it, share it, share with everybody, you know, get the message out there. We need the full man to understand throughout the Coachella because I truly believe if we understand the surah we will solve 90% of the social problems in the soma. Allah grant us all the understanding of the surah and the understanding of the Quran and put the neuro of the Quran into our hearts and help us to live by it and we he except for myself need to
forgive us for our faults in our mistakes. Walk with the one that is
Salam Alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh