Ismail Kamdar – The Shariahs Primary Objective
AI: Summary ©
The Sharia law is designed to suppress people's desire to be pious and is structured based on the ultimate goal of promoting the sharia. The law is structured based on seeking only the best and most beneficial things while avoiding harmful behavior. The law is structured based on the ultimate goal of ultimately promoting the sharia and is designed to facilitate beneficial and beneficial behavior. The sharia is designed to facilitate the benefits of the individual, not the group, and is designed to facilitate the benefits of the individual. The sharia is designed to facilitate the benefits of the individual, not the group, and is designed to facilitate the benefits of the individual, not the group. The sharia is designed to facilitate the benefits of the individual, not the group, and is designed to facilitate the benefits of the individual, not the group. The sharia is designed to facilitate the benefits of the individual, not the group, and is designed to facilitate the benefits of the individual, not the group. The sharia isAI: Transcript ©
Before we get into our topic, it's a
reminder to continue making dua for our for
our brothers and sisters in Gaza. And
one of the things you have noticed in
the past few months is that when it
comes to the propaganda war,
Israel has lost decisively over the past few
months.
We are
seeing
a changing of global
sentiment towards the Palestinians and towards Muslims in
general
that we haven't seen in our lifetime.
And, inshallah, this is the beginning of of
something good.
Right? Even in the darkest of times, they
are
in the near
future, things will turn in our favor as
in Oman.
One of the questions that
is often raised by those
who don't understand the Sharia
and are afraid of the Sharia
is why?
Why do we need a Sharia? Why do
we need a religious law?
Why do we need God's law?
And often, there's a historical
context, a bit of historical trauma
behind why people ask this question.
When it comes from a Christian perspective,
their religious law
held them back from progress,
and so they assumed that Islamic law does
the same,
which we know historically is not true.
It was during the times of Sharia
that Muslims were the world leaders of science
and technology.
Our religion has absolutely no problem with advances
in any field as long as it's ethical.
That's the only bal that's the only checks
we put on things like science. Right? Ethical
and moral guidelines.
There may be Muslims who ask this question,
Muslims who are convinced that the secular or
the Western way is better, and who may
come from backgrounds where there's an extreme understanding
of the Sharia.
And so they think of the Sharia as
this extreme law, just, you know, one of
the
misconceptions that that exist amongst Muslims today of
what the Sharia is,
is they see it as
state enforced
piety.
Right? This is the misconception in many Muslims'
mind that Sharia equals state enforced piety.
So they assume that under Sharia,
everyone's forced to be pious, otherwise, they're going
to be worked.
Right?
Which has never existed in the history of
Islam, except for a few extremist movements here
and there.
There was no state and forced piety,
even in the time of Rasulullah
in the Sahaba. When you read the biographies
of the people that lived under Sharia at
that time, It was every type of person.
It's understood that a state will be made
up of all kinds of people in terms
of the level of faith, the level of
practice,
and the closeness of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
You cannot enforce piety. Piety has to come
from within.
Rather, what the Sharia does is it polices
public
immorality.
Right? We don't want immorality in the public
space. As for people's private sense, that is
their own personal business.
Nonetheless, the question they ask is why? Why
do we need God's law?
They assume
that humans are capable of making their own
laws, and humans are capable
of understanding
right from wrong and good from evil on
their own.
And, really, the history of the past 50
years or even the past 100 years
proves this to be wrong.
Over and over again,
governments come up with laws
that are in their favor.
They come up with laws that end up
going against basic morality.
They come up with laws that other lands
look at and think, what is wrong with
them?
Human beings may be partially able
to arrive at right and wrong,
but in a certain level where God has
to intervene, and it does not hold on.
This is right, and this is wrong.
So
when we look at the question
of why is there a sharia? Why should
we follow God's law? Why should a Muslim
land implement God's law? There's 2 levels to
answering it.
Level 1,
because Allah knows best.
Right? Level 1 is because Allah knows best,
and Allah
says in the Quran about the verse of
jihad,
fighting is compulsory upon you even though you
may dislike it. And perhaps you dislike something
and it is good for you
and it is good for you and perhaps
you love something and it is bad for
you, Allah knows and you do not know.
This verse is a comprehensive verse. He teaches
us that when he comes to the laws
of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala,
Allah knows that we do not know. Perhaps,
we love that which is bad for us.
Perhaps we don't like that which is good
for us. That's why we should obey God
and not invent our own laws.
So that's level 1.
Right? That if you believe in a supreme
creator who is perfect in his knowledge and
wisdom, and who created us and knows us
better than we know ourselves,
then you will trust his law above your
own judgment.
The second level
is what the philosophers of Sharia
have built upon this called,
the goals or the higher objectives of the
Sharia.
And what these scholars have deduced
is that Allah is
Al Hakim. He is infinitely wise.
Therefore,
his law is built upon infinite wisdom.
Sometimes,
we don't understand that wisdom, but most of
the time, we do.
And they went through all of the laws
of Islam,
and they summarized it in one simple sentence.
If you don't take anything else from this
group, but just take this one sentence. Right?
That how do you define what Islamic law
is about? Or what is the primary goal
of Islamic law?
Well, the scholars who have looked into this,
they've written massive treaties about it, 700 page
books about it, but the entire book is
often summarized in one sentence.
And that sentence is, the Sharia
is about facilitating that which is beneficial for
humanity
and keeping away that which is harmful to
humanity.
There's 2 parts to the sharia.
Facilitating
that which is beneficial,
warding off that which is harmful.
These are the two parts of what makes
the Sharia.
Allah
has revealed a law that is very simple.
Anything that is beneficial and necessary for humanity
is either compulsory,
or recommended, or permissible.
And the vast majority of the things of
this world are permissible.
There's a very small list of prohibitions.
And the only things that are prohibited by
consensus
are things that are known to be harmful
to society.
And so the way God's law is structured
is structured, the way Allah subhanahu wa'ala's law
is structured
is that whatever
benefits
us, it's dead.
Whatever harms us, Allah is protecting us from
it.
I'll give you a few examples of this.
Firstly, we have a principle built upon this
that's important to understand.
Principles expressed in 2 different ways in Arabic.
The first part is,
the original rule of anything is permissible.
Meaning, in our Sharia, things are by default
permissible.
Right?
And then linked to this is the rule
that anything that is harmful
is prohibited.
Anything that is harmful is prohibited.
So
when we analyze the things of this world,
the deep world's ruling is the.
So only if something's harmful, that it becomes
haram.
So for example, you can drink whatever you
want.
Juice,
cold drink,
water,
milkshakes,
whatever you want. So halal.
The only drinks that are around are the
intoxicating drinks.
Why?
Because they are harmful to society.
They are harmful to the individual and they
are harmful to society.
So Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala has given us
an unlimited
amount of permissible drinks
and one prohibited type of drink.
Why?
Because whatever is beneficial,
is part of the Sharia.
And, whatever is harmful, is prohibited by the
Sharia.
Likewise,
in our Sharia,
you can go into almost any profession you
want.
You can take up almost any job you
want. You can start almost any business you
want,
except
if it involves haram,
except if it is harmful to other people.
There's very few
careers,
or professions, or businesses that are haram.
And the few that are haram
are haram because they are harmful to society.
So if you wanna be a doctor, be
a doctor. If you wanna be a scientist,
be a scientist. If you wanna be an
architect, be an architect. It's all halal. Whatever
you wanna be, it's halal.
You wanna open a casino? No. It's haram.
Why? Again, the same law applies.
Why is it haram?
Because casinos
are harmful to society.
They bring destruction
and problems and chaos to society.
So that type of business is haram.
So go into whatever business you want except
for the few that are haram.
This is how our Sharia works. You see,
many people when they think of the Sharia,
they think of it as just a list
of restrictions.
They think of think of it as the
idea of everything's haram.
You know, except for Ibadat. That's how they
think of it. Everything's haram except worshiping Allah.
But it's actually the opposite.
It's actually the opposite.
Everything's halal
unless there's a reason for it to be
haram.
And what would be counted as a reason
for it to be haram? Very few things.
Number 1, if it's explicitly mentioned in the
Quran or sunnah, then it is haram. Number
2, if it is harmful to the individual
of society,
and its harms outweigh its benefits, then it
is haram.
Number 3, if it is impure,
it is haram. If it's something impure, it
is haram to use. And number 4, if
it is intoxicating, it is haram. Right? These
are the 4 categories of haram. Things that
are intoxicating,
things that are harmful,
things that are impure, and things explicitly mentioned
in the Quran and sunnah. And you will
find
that in the Quran and Sunnah,
very few things are explicitly
listed as Haram. Meaning, everything else is halal.
Look at how the Quran talks about food.
Allah
gives us a list in Surah Maidah
of 4 types of food that are Haram.
Just 4.
Pork,
blood,
animals that are not slaughtered in a way
that Allah Allah has legislated,
and animals that are slaughtered for idols.
Just 4 things are mentioned in this verse
as haram. And it was mentioned in halal
in Surah Maidah. Allah says,
Allah has made all pure things halal for
you.
All good things are halal for you. So
the haram is restricted to 4,
and the halal is left open ended. Anything
that's good and healthy and pure is halal.
This is how the Quran functions. This is
this is this is
a consistent pattern throughout the Quran and Surnah
in describing halal and haram.
That the halal is always left open ended,
and the Haram is listed as very few
things.
So if you take anything from today's khutbah,
if somebody had to ask you why is
there a Sharia?
Why do you have God's law? Why can't
we just have secular law? Why can't we
just make our own laws?
You answer this on two levels.
Level 1,
because God knows best. He created us. He
knows what's best for us.
Level 2,
because the Sharia is designed such that it
facilitates
whatever is beneficial for us, and it wards
off whatever is harmful for us. And we
want to live a life that is beneficial
and free from harm.
Therefore, we will follow the Sharia.
And that is really
the key to understanding every law of Islam.
If you can understand this concept
that
the Sharia is all about facilitating what is
beneficial
and wording of what is harmful. I just
speak about this with examples for 5 or
6 hours.
Right? But you really should just take the
time to think about this one sentence.
If you can understand this one sentence,
you can understand all of the Sharia.
You understand the wisdom behind 1,000 of laws.
Because this really
summarizes the Sharia as a whole. We ask
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala to accept.
So a bit of reflections of what's going
on in the world this week.
It's very fascinating to see the events taking
place in the United States throughout this week.
Been a
very interesting week
in terms of
the shattering of the illusion of freedom in
the West.
Over the past 50 years, the world's been
under a spell,
the spell of modernity, secularism, and liberalism.
This idea that the west is this free
land and that their ways are the best
and the rest of the world needs to
follow them.
And many Muslims
have been blinded into thinking that this is
it. That if we Muslims want to succeed,
we need to be like them.
Over the past 15 years,
these nations have started to unravel,
and they started to fall apart.
And this past week, we we beginning to
see signs of it in ways we never
imagined.
The fact that this week, across campuses all
over the United States,
Muslims and non Muslims alike,
sinners and righteous alike,
were camped out in campuses,
demanding the rights of the Palestinians, is something
unheard of.
And the fact
that Zionist supporters
and the government
had to resort to violence,
to try and get rid of these protesters.
Shows you how desperate this government has become.
It shows
you that
there is weakness
in what what once was the mighty empire
of our times.
And then when you look at the fact
they're now trying to pass a new antisemitism
bill,
that essentially makes beliefs of Islam and Christianity
illegal.
Right?
Because you're not allowed to believe
that the Jews were after Jesus.
Right? That he have that they tried to
have Jesus. It's like a new rule they're
trying to pass.
It shows you desperation.
When the land that champions itself as the
land of freedom and freedom of speech
is resorting to such drastic tactics
to silence the freedom of speech of their
citizens.
And when their citizens are turning against them,
understand
that we are in a very interesting turning
point in human history.
A very interesting turning point in human history.
Because exactly 100 years ago, in 1924,
the Khilafat was abolished.
The last known Sharia empire ended. And for
a 100 years, this Ummah has been in
a bit of a state of chaos. Right?
We had those who said, no, we need
to embrace the secularism of the West. And
they tried to force secularism on the Muslim
world, and it has failed.
It has failed.
Every land where they try to force secularism
on the Muslim world, the current young generation
are more religious than ever.
There is a revival of religiosity amongst the
young people, amongst Muslims, everywhere in the world.
And then,
on top of that, you know, when you
talk about the fall of nations,
many times people imagine those who don't really
study history, they think a fall of a
nation comes because another nation invades them. No.
Historically,
the fall of a nation comes
when they embrace
immorality
and they lose their spirituality.
And this has been going on in the
West for the past 50 years, since the
sexual revolution of the 19 sixties seventies.
This has had a domino effect of weakening
society,
weakening families,
weakening the bonds that hold people together.
And now, we are gonna see the results
of that.
It's really interesting that things are falling apart
so much in the west that even western
academics no longer refer to this era as
mod modernity.
They refer to the era we're in now
as postmodernity.
The age for modernity is over. We are
now in the age of postmodernity.
What comes next? Only Allah knows.
But what we are seeing amongst young people
in the west, for example, is the rise
of radical skepticism.
Radical skepticism. You know, the generation before this
was skeptical about religion.
This generation is skeptical about everything. They're skeptical
about atheism, about politics,
about medicine, about science, about school. They're skeptical
about everything.
But they need something to fill that void.
You can't be skeptical of everything. At some
point, you have to believe in something.
Right?
I really believe that at this point, we
are now at a point in time
where
we really have a great opportunity to showcase
Islam to the world,
to show people that here is the solution
to all your problems.
People in the west
are desperate for a solution
to rebar.
It's so fascinating. 20 years ago,
the common,
you know, discussion amongst Muslims is, can't we
find some loopholes? Riba is not so bad.
Let us embrace Riba.
Now the the conversations they have with non
Muslims is, the non Muslims are saying, Riba
is evil. It's haram. We need to get
out of it. It's destroying the world's economy.
Look how the world's changed.
Right?
People are turning against these things. Just 20
years ago, everybody was pro LGBTQ,
but they pushed it so far
that even
even some gays think other gays are extreme.
That's how far they pushed it. Right? That
they wouldn't
that far. And now everybody say, okay. Yo.
We need to pull this back. It really
was a slippery slope.
And so we're now in a point where
we can showcase people a better way. The
Sharia,
the Khilafat,
Islam as a whole is a better way.
It fills the void that people are missing.
People are desperate for a solution to the
problem arising in the west, that there's no
more such thing as a family.
The entire system of families falling apart in
the west, to such an extent,
that in some countries they are worried about
their populations going extinct.
Because people aren't getting married, people aren't having
children. What's going to happen to a nation
when this happens?
Islam solves us.
Islam solves us. One of the primary goals
of the Sharia is the preservation of the
family. And this is why we don't have
this problem. Right? We, at 100 and a
half, still have very strong and large families,
despite everything else going on in the world.
All of the problems
that people are complaining about in the West.
Whether it's the rise
of of hedonism, whether it's the rise of
sexual immorality,
whether it's the spread of rebar, whether it's
the failing economy, whether it's the injustice of
the Western system,
whether it's
the falling apart of our families,
the Sharia
fixes
all of this.
Our job is simple.
Understand our religion,
teach our religion,
showcase our religion, and let people see a
better way.
And so we're gonna see very interesting things
over the next few years, inshallah. We're going
to see a changing of the world. We're
going to see new powers rising.
We're going to see old empires crumbling. We're
going to see new systems of thought developing.
I'm optimistic that during this period,
you will see the return of Sharia and
Khilafat as well, because it's been exactly a
100 years.
And
it is the sunnah of Allah, subhanahu wa
ta'ala, that whenever the Ummah falls,
within a 100 to a 150 years, they
pull themselves back up.
Right? And inshallah, we've seen the revival of
Islam intellectually, spiritually, and many other ways. Inshallah,
the political revival will come next.
And so,
as we continue
down focusing on these topics of Gaza and
and Palestine, many of us, you know, we
tend to focus only on the negative because
there's a lot of negatives,
lot of devastation, a lot
of a lot of trauma,
and what we are witnessing coming from that
part of the world.
But ask us also to focus on the
positives.
The positive,
the one that no one's thinking about is
that
the actions of the Zionist right now show
that they are desperate.
What they're doing right now is what people
do when they know they're about to lose.
Right? In the past, they've, like, attack for
1 week, give them a break for a
few months, attack for 1 week, give them
a break for a few months. What we're
seeing right now, whether it's the the massacres
taking place in Gaza or the anti Semitism
laws being passed in America, or the attacks
on campus in America,
this is all
desperation.
And if they are desperate,
they are on the verge of collapse.
And so be strong, be hopeful,
and use it as an opportunity
to let the world see that Islam is
truly the solution for the problems of humanity.
We ask
to grant victory to the Muslims of Gaza
and to restore peace and justice
and Sharia to the Muslim world.
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