Jeffrey Lang – Muhammad PBUH The Seal of the Prophets Why 274
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And forced me to lead the prayer in
Maghreb,
so I'd like to ask Muhammad to present.
Try to adjust the
the volume a little bit.
Dear brothers and sisters,
as Allah
told us,
definitely
there is
an example
for you and the prophet peace be upon
him. And Insha'Allah,
tonight's lecture will be
Muhammad,
the seal of peace be upon him, the
seal of the prophets. Why?
Doctor Jeffrey Lang is going to address this
topic.
And he asked me
not to introduce him, and I told him,
I'm gonna just call you mister speaker.
So I call upon,
mister speaker to come and give a speech,
since he doesn't like any introductions.
Doctor Jeffrey Lang comes from the University of
Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas.
And, his book
Struggling to Surrender
will be here Insha'Allah. You can have a
look at it.
So I would, request doctor
Glenn to come and,
make his presentation, Sharma. Normally makes his presentation
in about 1 hour,
and then we'll have about half an hour
for the question and answer.
Do you like it? It's so dark in
here.
Can't see anyone
talking to a huge light
bulb. Yeah. It's so intimidating. You know, I
feel like I'm standing in a lineup.
Miss
in the name of God, the merciful, the
compassionate.
Oh, that's much better.
I just
I just arrived from Lawrence about 5 minutes
ago.
Well, about 15 minutes ago by car. So
if I seem a little bit frazzled, I
am.
These are just some
personal reflections of mine on the,
that I had when I was thinking about
the, Shahada
several years ago.
The testimony of faith that
all of us make
many, many times
in our lives.
And so I thought I would just share
them with you. You know, the the issue
of,
you know, in what
why is there a last
prophet? Why was prophet Mohammed the last prophet?
Why are there no prophets after him?
These are questions that I frequently get from
non Muslims
when I lecture at, universities
in America.
The non Muslims are very curious about this
fact. Why
would God suddenly leave Muslims for the next
1400
years
without a prophet if as you Muslims claim
he guided mankind so directly and personally and
almost continuously
throughout history?
I mean,
why would he suddenly abandoned man or at
least
exclude man
from his,
prophetic
from his guidance through prophet messengers.
And so this is a question we often
have to deal with.
I'm not I'm not trying to contradict any
of the arguments that are usually given by
Muslims. It was these are just happened to
be a couple of insights that I had
that I think complement the ones that you
often read in books by, you know, scholars
like,
Maududi from Pakistan or say it could have
from Egypt or Mohammed Khotab or even
more ancient scholars
like Al Tabari and Eben Temi and etcetera.
I don't mean to contradict what they say,
only to add some things I didn't see
that any of them
say. So let me take you back to
a critical moment in Islamic
history.
Critical moment in our community.
One of the most critical moments
ever really.
And it was in the courtyard of
Medina
and there was a rumor spreading
rapidly through the crowd. And the crowd was
in shock
and on the edge of panic.
And even though there had been plenty of
signs in the last several days, even last
couple of weeks,
the crowd is now
almost ready to just disintegrate right there
and erupt in this direction and that direction.
People were tense and nervous and strained.
Maybe this would be their greatest trial
after all.
Maybe this trial would be greater than
the suffering
that they faced before
the 2 immigrations.
Maybe this would be tougher than the fighting
that they faced,
even the dying.
For he had always been there
with his sure and steady leadership,
his tremendous spirituality and compassion,
his reassuring smile,
and his kindly sense of humor.
How could they forget the time
when he said to his startled cousin as
he brushed him
off, awake, oh, father of the dust.
And out of the deepest humility and respect,
he took his own mantle and made it
and laid it down on the ground and
made a place for a poor old woman
to sit.
And how could they ever forget that rugged
determined gait of his as if he was
striding uphill or how could they forget his
granddaughter
riding him on his shoulders while he led
them in the prayer.
And God was always with
him. In the cave with his companion,
on the field of a hood,
when he seemed to be left and you
had to face an army almost single handedly
for a moment
and on the pulpit.
It can't be true. They thought.
What are we going to do now?
Omar bolted from his quarters
into the courtyard.
They're lying.
He commanded the crowd and he promised to
cut down with his own sword.
The pernicious fabricators of this rumor.
Omar towered over over his audience and today,
he looked more fierce than ever.
He used to joke that the sight of
Omar, even Satan used to turn and flee.
At first, they were relieved
for Omar had just saw him seconds ago.
But on the other hand, they could still
hear the crying of his wives inside their
apartments.
And there was something eerie and unreal in
Omar's protest like a young boy who can't
accept some fact.
Oh, God. It is true they realized.
Our Lord help us.
Mohammed is gone.
Abu Bakr, his horse was sweating and panting
hard as he guided it up to
the courtyard and he dismounted it hastily hastily.
He made his way immediately for his daughter's
part apartment. He didn't stop to listen to
see what was going on in the crowd.
He parted the door, the, curtain of the
apartment with his left hand, kept his eyes
lowered and asked leave to enter.
No need to ask today,
was the sad reply.
He walked over to the
mat where his son-in-law lay.
His face was covered with a cloak,
And he thought how their friendship went back
so many years.
Too long before he was a prophet or
people knew him as such.
Even before his marriage to Khadija.
Back to when they were both good friends
and bright young prospects in Meccan society.
Young men who were obviously on their way
up and had bright futures ahead of
them. He bent down and fit and kissed
the face
of his beloved.
Sweet, you are you are in life, he
said.
And sweet, you are in death.
He lifted his his head gently between his
hands
while his tears fell onto the prophet's face.
Oh, my friend,
my chosen
one, dear to me than my mother and
my father.
The death that God has written for you,
you have finally tasted.
After this, no death shall ever come to
you again.
And those were his last words to his
dear departed friend.
And with great cure care,
he lowered the prophet's head back onto the
pillow,
bent again to kiss his face,
drew the cover over him for the last
time,
and left the tiny dimly lit room.
Abu Bakr
was not
what you would say would be the typical
candidate
for leadership.
He was short.
He was slight of frame.
And actually, he was best known not for
his sternness and severity, but for his tender
heart and clemency.
Didn't appear to be a natural leader.
Even his own daughter once disqualified him from
leading the prayer because of his excessive what
she felt was his excessive emotionality.
He used to weep when he read various
verses from the Quran.
However, the Prophet saw deeper into it.
Reentering the courtyard, Abu Bakr went to the
front of the crowd.
He asked for their attention.
But Amr, who was still haranguing and screaming
at them, refused to be interrupted.
Abu Bakr had to raise his voice high
above Omer's shouts to be heard. But the
rest of the crowd, all their eyes were
fixed on Abu Bakr because they want him
now wanted to know what he had to
say.
So he had to begin loudly.
For those who worship Mohammed.
The crowd.
Just fell in stunned silence.
Even Omar, along with the rest of the
crowd was now staring at Abu Bakr, almost
terrified,
waiting to see what he had to say.
Know
that Muhammad
is dead.
But for those of you who worship Allah,
know that Allah lives
and never dies.
And as he continued on, his voice rose
in intensity.
Muhammad,
peace be upon him, is but a messenger
and messengers passed away before him. If he
dies or is killed, will you turn your
back on your heels?
And whoever turns his back on his heels
will do no harm to Allah, but Allah
will reward those who are great.
Omar,
who was stunned by the realization that the
prophet was really dead,
fell his knees under the weight of what
he just heard, the truth that he just
heard, releasing the pain and the bereavement and
and the suffering that he had refused to
accept up until then. In the future, Omar
would recount. And when Abu Bakr recited those
divine words to had a new and original
meaning for them, it was as if they
had heard them for the very first time.
And although it would not become official to
the next day,
the question of who would succeed
prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, politically,
because no one could succeed him as a
prophet, of course, was was answered at that
very moment in the hearts of so many.
It was a critical moment in the history
of Muslims.
It was a time when that community could
have disintegrated and broke it apart right then
and there. But Abu Bakr,
may Allah be pleased with him, held that
community together and through the next 2 years,
and those 2 years would bring him to
the end of his life. That was his
primary mission to keep that community bound together,
unified.
And that's what I want to discuss today.
I wanna discuss
the finality of prophet Mohammed's mission and how
it relates to the Shahad.
This all started, I told you when I
was thinking about the Shahadah, I was also
reading a verse in the Quran that night
too, as a matter of fact. The first
one reads, this day I have perfected for
you your religion
and completed my favor unto you, and chosen
for you Islam,
submission as a religion.
And the other verse, in this one, I
was thinking about kept me awake for hours.
Mohammed is not the father of any of
your
men. Muhammad is not the father of any
of your men. But he is the messenger
of Allah and the seal of the prophets.
And Allah is ever knower of all things.
That verse just had me tossing and turning
all night.
Because what's the connection?
Muhammad, peace be upon him, is not the
father of any of your men. It's fine.
No. He is the messenger of Allah and
the seal of the prophets. What's the connection,
I thought, between prophecy being sealed with prophet
Muhammad, peace be upon him,
and Muhammad not being having any sons.
And what in God's infinite knowledge as he
says,
what is the connection? For god is the
knower of all things.
He knows how we work. He knows how
we think. He knows humanity.
What is the connection?
Well, the second verse that I just mentioned
was revealed in the 4th year after Prophet
Muhammad, peace be upon him, emigrated to Medina
with his companions, so he would live 6
more years.
But not only was it a statement of
current fact, for that was true at that
time,
but it was a prophecy as well.
Because when Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him,
died, he left no male heirs.
Now
the deep
emotional and psychological need for such a person
was deeply felt. Why?
The first inclination hint I got of this
was when I was reading through Sahib Bukhari
once. I was going through it and a
couple of companions made the following comment.
It wasn't based on anything the prophet said,
peace be upon him. It was just their
personal opinion. At least it was presented as
such. They said,
if prophet Mohammed
had a son or if Ibrahim had lived,
succeeded him, he definitely would have been a
prophet.
In their mind, they felt that if prophet
Mohammed, peace be upon him, had a son,
at least these two companions, he definitely would
have been a prophet.
Because the Arabs had always felt
that
virtue,
personal qualities,
truthfulness,
honesty,
goodness,
compassion,
caring,
spiritual qualities.
Were not something that one just learned and
picked up from the environment.
But much more than we do today, they
believe that these are things that people inherited.
Even to this day, the Arabs have a
much stronger sense of
goodness almost being something into people's blood.
That's a good family.
That's a good family.
You know, or when they ask you about,
you know, when you go for a job
application,
who is your father?
Oh, yes. And your grandfather. Well, he was
a good man.
Yeah. Hire this guy. His grandfather was a
very good man.
You know, almost as if you inherit these
qualities. In America, when I go and apply
for a job, nobody says to me, who
is your father and your grandfather?
You know, and even if I told them,
they wouldn't care.
You know?
You know, it just doesn't make any sense
to them. But when I went to visited
the Middle East, I found out that family
background means a lot.
People, once they know your family background, they
know you.
And even more so, in that day,
in 7th century,
they felt that these were inherited qualities.
You know. And so the natural inclination would
have been that if Prophet Muhammad, peace be
upon him, had a son,
he would definitely
inherit in some sense at least
some of that divine inspiration, some of that
prophetic mantle.
And so you could see the relationship between
the ceiling of the prophecy prophethood with Mohammed
and Allah explaining that and explaining that
and making the connection with the fact that
he has no sons.
I believe, and this is just my personal
opinion,
that if prophet Mohammed had a son,
even though the Quran declared that he was
the last of the prophets, it would have
been extremely difficult
for so many members of the community
not to bend that just a little.
Not to assume that his sons and descendants
had some special prophetic charisma.
The emotional need was there. The emotional inclination
was there.
Omar, one of his closest companions,
whose personality was molded by the prophet, peace
be upon him, through so many years
couldn't tolerate the fact that he was dead.
And Abu Bakr had to bring them to
his senses.
As we know,
many
many of the early Muslims sought from Muhammad's
family a divinely guided leader.
One who through kinship
would be would be endowed with a charismatic,
a divine authority.
Yet the Quran
history
and the prophets decisions
in the last days, may God's peace be
upon
him, made such a selection
impossible or difficult.
First of all, as we said, he left
no sons.
2nd,
prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, outlived all
of his daughters but his youngest Fatima,
who died very shortly after he did. And
remember, the Arabs used to, you know, have
queens in in pre Islamic history. And so
they would have matched they might have been
even inclined to see in her,
sort of semi
semi prophetic,
leadership
or charisma.
Let's say the least.
But as it was, she died very soon
after he did.
Ali
Fatima's
husband
and the prophet's nephew
would have been a very good likely candidate
in the mind of many for that divinely
inspired leadership, that charisma.
But
if if Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him,
chose him to succeed him. But as it
was, at
least the Sunni Muslims believe and I don't
mean to make this an argument or anything.
It's just I'm a Sunni Muslim. I'm presenting
a Sunni point of view with without any
feeling of competition with any other point of
view. This is just presenting my own personal
feelings.
But
as we feel as we believe, he pointed
no successor.
And it would be first Abu Bakr, then
Omar, then Usman, and then finally Ali.
And by that time, the idea of the
leadership of the Muslim community being a community
selection was now a firmly established concept in
the minds of most Muslims. Hassan and Hussain,
the Prophet's grandsons, if they had attained to
political leadership, I think it would have been
very difficult for many of the Muslims not
to see in them.
A very special sort of
prophetic status almost. I mean, even to this
day, you see even in the West.
This type of human need in response. Remember
Kennedy,
John f Kennedy was so loved that when
he died, people thought that Bobby Kennedy or
or Ted Kennedy, Kennedy, if they would come
to office, they would just sort of take
over where he left off.
Would it be as if John Kennedy were
back in office again? They used to say,
yes. Let's have Camelot again.
There's no need to think that Bobby Kennedy
would have been anything like John Kennedy or
Ted Kennedy. Well, now nobody thinks Ted Kennedy
would have been like John Kennedy.
But for years, people thought that, well, maybe
inherited some of that John Kennedy ishness.
It was a family trait.
But as it was, both Hassan and Hussain,
the prophets, dear
grandsons, whom we love so much,
never obtained political office, and of course, Hussein
died tragically
in, Karbala,
without ever having achieved any political
rule.
Nonetheless, various lines of descent from Ali came
to be viewed by a significant Muslim, minority
as inheriting a prophetic charisma.
But most Muslims viewed the leadership of the
community as simply a political appointment
with certain religious responsibilities and significance,
but no divine mandate.
The majority of Muslims came to understand the
designation, the seal of the Prophet, the khatam
of the Prophet, which literally means the last
in a series of
or the last in a sequence of
in the most obvious and conservative sense.
Now the Quran tells us
I hope I'm not boring you off to
death. I I just lay in bed at
night thinking about things like this. And then
I get up the next day and type
them in my,
you know, Macintosh.
And I think no one would ever even
care about this.
But, you know, it's just the random thoughts
of a sort of a monkish character
without knowing. Let me take that back. But
in any case,
the crown informs us that every nation
has been sent
a a divinely guided messenger at some point
in their history and maybe many messengers.
The prophet, peace be upon him, as we
reported to have said that at least 100,000
prophets have been sent to mankind throughout its
history.
On the one hand, that sounds very
great. But on the other hand, when you
think about it, at least when I think
about it, that's a rather pessimistic appraisal of
mankind's
moral and spiritual resolve.
Because it would seem
if so many prophets had to be sent
and had to follow the previous prophets. And
then more had to come after that. And
another and another and another.
Seems to say that mankind is quite poor
in preserving and adhering to God's
revealed
word.
So
does it make sense then if man has
this inclination to swerve from the teachings of
the prophet?
To distort what they are taught?
To not correctly follow what they've been given
by God in Revelation, does it make sense
then that God would suddenly
and abruptly leave humankind
with its proven
tendency for deviation
from revelation?
Does it make sense that God would leave
mankind to itself until the end of creation
after guiding him so directly up to and
including the time of prophet Mohammed.
That's exactly how one student at Kansas State
University put the question to me. And, well,
very close.
Now first of all, the Muslim will usually
counter and correctly that the Quran is distinguished
from all other sacred scriptures
by its purity.
And since these other scriptures are in some
sense contaminated
and the Quran is not,
This is one way that the Quran sort
of completes
and finalizes the process of revelation.
Others may contain statements, Other scriptures may contain
statements close to what earlier prophets preached.
Maybe even some verbatim accounts.
But these are so thoroughly mixed with folklore,
poetry,
interpretation,
personal commentary,
so thoroughly mixed with errors in translation,
copying copying,
editing errors, and transmission errors. So thoroughly mixed
with other accretions,
cultural influences
that the sifting out of actual revelation
in these other scriptures becomes
nearly impossible. And I'm these are not my
words. These are
time and time again, the scholars of those
other religions with those scriptures.
Modern scholars.
The Muslim insists on the other hand that
the Quran
contains nothing,
but the words
proclaimed
by prophet Mohammed,
peace be upon him, under what he was
certain
under what he was certain was
miraculous
revelation.
And most modern Western scholars of Islam are
willing to admit that much.
H a r Gibbs said that the Quran,
it could be
for all practical purposes sure that the Quran
represents nothing more than what prophet Mohammed, peace
be upon him, preached was revelation from God.
What he felt and was sure in his
own mind, utterly sincere
in his own mind that that was revelation
from God and that is what the Quran
represents. The revelation he received from God to
communicate to mankind.
Now, h a r Gid was not a
Muslim,
so he maybe wasn't convinced
of that that was true, but he was
convinced
that the Quran represents what Mohammed felt and
was certain was revelation from God and nothing
but.
And many other scholars are were willing to
say the same, and their their numbers are
legion. Carlyle was one of the first, and
Montgomery Watt will say the same today. And,
I mean, well, I think he's still alive.
And, Kenneth Craig, and, you know, you could
just go on and on.
They all pretty much repeat that claim.
So the argument goes, we Muslims now
have the pure
word of God. At least we're certain of
it. At least we feel confident, utterly and
completely confident in that. And so there's no
need for any future revelation.
But now
the non Muslim will say,
Yes, okay.
I'm willing.
Hypothetically, I'll accept that. But what about the
need to interpret
and apply that revelation
in an ever changing world?
What about the
many difficulties?
The many questions that are bound to arise
that were not brought up in that revelation
ex at least explicitly.
What about this? I mean, wouldn't it be
helpful?
Wouldn't it almost be necessary
to have a prophet,
a divinely inspired
messenger
to help you through those difficulties to get
the right interpretation?
Because certainly Muslim interpretations of the Quran, they
vary widely.
Who has the correct
one?
The Muslim encounter.
Yes.
But we have the Sunnah.
The multitudinous
recollections
of prophet Mohammed's
sayings and doings, peace be upon,
collected, collated,
and subjected to a meticulous scientific historical criticism
during the first three centuries
of Islam.
And these
in the sunnah
covers many, many
things and teaches us how to deal with
many, many situations
and elaborates on the Quran.
And so we are fully prepared to meet
the future head on.
And this is sort of the classical argument.
The modern skeptic,
the student at k state, actually there were
2 of them,
but there have been I've seen many others
around the country will say, yes, but let's
be honest. I mean, certainly we'll encounter situations
not dealt with in Prophet Mohammed, peace be
upon him, his lifetime.
After all, my Muslim friends,
your friendly skeptic will say, it has been
1400
years since his demise.
14 centuries.
How do we correctly respond to situations that
the Sunnah never even dealt with? And they
do come up with situations that the Sunnah
never dealt with
explicitly anyway,
explicitly.
The Muslim says we have the Sharia
based on the Quran and the prophet Sunnah.
A complete code of living developed over several
centuries
by 100,
thousands of jurors to meet every possible foreseeable
contingency.
Yet is it any longer though to argue
that point of view That the ancient jurist
foresaw every single
possible problem that would arise?
I mean, there's all sorts of problems that
arise. We know as Muslims living in the
States that there are many situations that if
we turn to the ancient law manuals, we're
just not gonna find covered.
How do we respond to those?
The Muslim
the Muslim says. We can study our scholars'
methodologies
and repeat their effort
and derive Islamic rules and regulations to address
our current situation?
And we can.
And that's the obvious response.
But now,
the non Muslim says, yes, my Muslim friend,
but the farther we move away from the
Quran, the farther we move from the divinely
revealed word,
the more
humanness we bring into this process,
the greater our dependence on human choices,
human judgements,
human effort,
which it seems is bound
to differ
between humans. This one's gonna disagree with that
one, this one's gonna argue with this one,
this one's gonna take this one, this one's
gonna reject that one.
They're gonna bound the scholars are gonna be
bound to differ and argue.
They're gonna accept some things, they're gonna throw
out others, they're gonna make decisions.
And in the process, it seems, since that's
a human effort,
it's bound to involve errors
at some point or other. In other words,
the farther we move away from the original
source of revelation,
the more human
activity we bring into that
interpretive process,
the more we're bound to make mistakes. We
can't all be right.
100 of issues
are being argued about
by Muslims today as they strive to adapt
to modern living.
Admittedly,
these arguments are not over concepts central and
essential to Islam.
At least from the standpoint of like Al
Qaeda, beliefs, and things like that.
There are what non Muslims would regard as
mundane issues like men's and women's roles in
the community, banking and investment practices, relations with
non Muslims, especially for those of us living
in the West. How do Muslims live as
a minority in a Western non Muslim government?
Muslim involvement involvement in Western political systems or
non Muslim political systems and similar concerns.
Muslims are arguing about these left and right
heated arguments, angry arguments, passionate arguments.
And even though they are not arguments over
things central to Islamic belief, they are extremely
important to the community and such controversies do
create a great deal of dissension and hurt
and pain and strain and stress and so
on.
As one Muslim student said to me during
the Gulf conflict,
if only the prophet, peace be upon him,
after
passionate argument in the mosque, we're here today
to settle these issues for us.
From this perspective then,
do we not need another prophet?
Does it make sense that Allah would abandon
us for 1400
years
and leave it to our own intellectual effort
to solve our problems? I mean, why?
The non Muslim student said to me, he
could he could
send another messenger
to solve our problems. And then another and
another and another. Why? Suddenly, no message.
Now any answer we
would you like me to go on or
are you tired? I think you look very
tired.
Either that or you look very nervous. I
don't know.
Either that or you just spit. Why does
it the sky just sit down?
Excuse me. I'm I I'm a little tired.
It's a 5 and a half hour drive.
Now any answer we attempt is purely speculative
speculative
because the Quran does not explicitly
respond to this issue, at least explicitly.
First of all, they're very wealthy, and there
probably are many, many reasons
in God's infinite wisdom why he entered ended
and sealed prophecy with prophet Muhammad, peace be
upon him. We could,
in our own limited human capacity, try to
venture a few.
For one thing,
perhaps the collective attempt to work out a
program of living
guided by the Quran and Mohammed's life example,
peace be upon him, is in itself a
very valuable social, intellectual, and spiritual exercise
requiring cooperation,
tolerance, humility,
and sincerity.
The possibilities for growth that such an endeavor
hold may outweigh the benefits of having a
profit
to decide every minor legal
difference of opinion.
And many Muslim scholars in the past felt
this way. Some of the ancient scholars said
that God had nurtured humanity through sort of
like a baby and then a child stage,
a young adult stage. And humanity finally reached
the stage when it was ready to receive
and protect
the perfect revelation and walk as adults in
the world.
You know, like a fa like a parents
do with children, man had reached a stage
where it was now time for him to
take what he had learned and apply it
and learn from it.
And that's certainly a legitimate,
response.
Another factor might be that the current environment,
and I thought about this many times, is
incapable of producing an individual possessing the level
of purity and simplicity
needed to be a prophet. Life is much
more corrupt than it was
1400 years ago. And soon after the time
of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, life
did become extremely corrupt even for the Muslims.
Wealth poured into their community,
political chaos erupted.
There was all sorts of problems that infected
the community.
Now needless to say, the Byzantine and Rome
and in Persian and the Indian and Chinese
civilizations were already on their way down.
Maybe life just became
too corrupt. And that none of us
really are untouched by this corrupting influence of
life.
There's even support for that point of view
in the Quran.
For example, and the end in the hadith.
There's a famous saying of prophet Muhammad, peace
be upon him, which goes the best generation
is my generation.
And then the next
and then the next. And then there will
come a time when a person's oath will
outstrip his,
witness, and his witness will outstrip his oath.
Those people becomes,
in general,
so corrupt and life so corrupt.
There's a verse in the Quran that tells
us that
the people that were foremost in faith are
many in the generation of prophet Muhammad, peace
be upon him, but lesser and less
as time goes by. There's even another verse
in the Quran that says that even the
Muslims someday will shun the Quran.
Or many Muslims. Not all Muslims, but many
Muslims.
So maybe the times
have just become so corrupting that none of
us
can reach the spiritual capabilities,
enlightenment,
receptivity
of a Mohammed, a Moses, or Jesus, peace
be upon.
Maybe life has just become too corrupt.
That's a possibility as well. And I think
we could venture many other
personal
but let me try some shared with you
some just some very personal feelings on this
and I'm almost done because you're probably very
tired
listening to speeches all day, and it's getting
late at night.
My poor students, they had to listen to
one of my lectures today about mathematics. They're
exhausted.
And you sort of had that glazed exhausted
look on your faces.
I think we could also get additional information
on the subject, vital information from the Quran.
You know, ancient scholars and modern scholars,
many of them have said the following,
That the best interpreter of the Quran
is the Quran.
If you want to
understand a certain verse from the Quran, look
again at the Quran and then again and
then again.
And compare verses that deal with the issue
and compare them and contrast them. And maybe
you'll learn something in that.
So what would be the best way, analytically
speaking, to approach this question
of the finality of prophet Mohammed's mission, peace
be upon him. The natural thing I think,
at least this is what popped in my
head,
the natural thing I think
is to do is first let's see what
necessitated his mission.
What does the Quran tells us?
What does the Quran tell us about the
about this mission? Why was it necessary that
he'd be charged with such a mission?
Perhaps if we study that, and that's a
simple that's easy enough to do, I think.
Then we'll see and then we try to
think about the finality of his mission. Maybe
and compare the tools, get the some of
the significant answers to this question.
At least that'll satisfy our skeptic from Kansas
State University, for example. And he was a
very nice
man, by the way.
Well, first of all, the Quran tells us
that Mohammed's
apostleship, peace be upon him, is the culmination
and completion
of God's direct communication to mankind,
through divinely inspired person.
So we think, fine.
Alright. Then what does the Quran tell us
about those divinely
inspired
messengers that preceded him?
Well, it tells us that their message was
invariably corrupted.
So what was that message?
The single most important fact, if you take
the intersection of all everything that they were
saying,
the single most important fact governing all creation
and preached by all of God's
messengers is very simple.
And anyone who reads the Quran knows it.
The one thing that they all preached in
common
and none of us could deny is that
they all preached
that terse formula.
There is no god but god.
There's none to be worshiped
but god.
My daughter Sarah the other day, my middle
daughter.
She's 7
and she is a cutie pie.
As God wills, of course.
She asked me, daddy, what does worship mean?
She said I went to Quran class all
summer long last, and they told me I
shouldn't worship this, I shouldn't worship that, I
should only God. Nobody told me what worship
means.
I told the worship, Sarah, is when you
make something
the most important thing in your life.
So if it's another man,
you worship that man. If that's the most
important thing in your existence,
You send your life on that, that's your
object of worship. If it's money, she said
money, you could worship money? I said yes.
Because you make it the most important thing
of your life. You'll do anything to get
it.
Step on people, cheat people, hurt people.
You don't care how much damage you do.
You wanna get that money.
You're worshiping money. That's the center of your
life.
Ron tells us that there is none and
nothing to be worshiped, but Allah.
That terse formula,
la ilaha illallah. There is no none to
be worshiped. There is no worship except the
worship due to Allah. It implies
that the many different objects of worship
that we as mankind choose.
It implies that the various objects of worship
that we choose besides God Almighty
have no real authority or power, and that
the divisions
and hatreds that their misdirected venerations lead to
are totally unnecessary
and a result of nothing more than evil
self destructive
man made illusions.
So that when I'm the example I showed
my daughter, the man who pursues wealth above
all else, his entire focus in life is
getting that
money and he hurts others to do it,
stomps on others to do it,
cheats this one, robs this one. He's living
an illusion
because that'll never bring him happiness, it'll never
bring him inner peace, it'll make him slave,
a slave to every dollar,
scared to death to lose it, and worst
of all, when he goes on to the
next life, when the only thing he'll bring
with him that has any,
worth at all, are his spiritual, moral and
ethical achievements, the goodness that he grew in,
when he's bankrupt in that, and his pockets
on earth were filled with money, he fulfill
the terrible
terrible
loss of that illusion that he lived.
And that's one of the messages of the
Quran that there is none to be worshiped
but Allah. And when we worship any others,
we destroy ourselves, we destroy others, we separate
ourselves from others, we our object of worship
becomes something we cling to and we keep
others away from us. We separate ourselves into
different groups. We hurt people that don't agree
with our object of worship or we feel
we are in the way of our object
of worship
becomes a disintegrating,
demoralizing
harmful factor in the human race.
But then but the phrase,
of course means that there is but one
spiritual and moral standard
governing humanity
and one measure of a person's worth. As
the Quran so poignantly says, oh, mankind,
low, we have created you male and female
and may have made you nations and tribes.
Why? So that you may come to know
one another.
So that you may come to know one
another.
Lo, the noblest among you in the sight
of Allah is the one who is foremost
and foremost in goodness.
A single moral standard applying to all humanity.
And that we relate, the ground tells us,
God made us male and female and nations
and tribes. Why? So we could come to
know each other and interact with each other.
And what type of interaction makes us the
foremost, the best in the sight of God?
And the and how and achieve the most
peace and serenity in this life and the
greatest reward in the hereafter? Our level of
goodness
and our relationships with others and our commitment
to our worship of God Almighty.
Most important of all,
implies that the barriers we set up between
ourselves and others are nothing more than fallacies.
Because we all must answer to the supreme
same supreme almighty authority,
God almighty.
In 7th century Arabia,
each tribe, as you all know, had its
own deity from which it sought protection,
favoritism,
permission,
solicitation,
and it's perpetual
intertribal
strife. Every tribe felt self justified.
Right? This tribe said
appeal to its deity.
Give me,
let me do this. Let me crush these
people over here. Let me steal from this
tribe over there. Go and pray to it.
This one went to his deity and this
and they were using their gods and their
objects of worship to support this perpetual intertribal
strife that was tearing the Arabian Peninsula apart.
That it kept it completely disintegrated.
But it took Islam's monotheism.
To unite the warring factions as the Quran
so poignantly
points out.
It said,
and hold fast,
all of you together
to the rope of Allah and do not
separate.
And remember Allah's favor unto you, how you
were enemies and he made friendship between your
hearts so that you became as brothers by
his grace. And how you are on the
brink of an abyss of fire
and he did save you from
it. You know, when Malcolm x made the
pilgrimage,
he was really
at that time in his life,
even he'll tell you, it was the first
time he really
understood Islam.
And he made the Shahada all over again
and committed himself anew
to the religion that he felt he had
never really understood up until that moment.
And when he speaks about Tauhid
and the phrase, it
says that
he came to realize that that implies 2
things.
The oneness of God and the unity and
equality
of all mankind.
And that's just what we're talking about right
now. La idaha illallah
has 2 components.
First and foremost, there is only one God.
And from that, it's natural corollary that we
are all
in essence
equal
in humanity.
We just because we are Muslims, we have
no right to take advantage of non
Muslims. Just because we are Muslims and we
feel we're on the right path, that gives
us no right to cheat others.
Our fellow human beings tomorrow
could submit themselves to god and be much
better than we are.
We have no right to,
wish them ill
unless they
attack us. We have no right to cheat
them. We have no right to be followed
to them. We have no right, the prophet,
peace be upon him, said to even use
foul language to them
because we are all sons of Adam. We're
all
children
of
Adam and we are all
essentially
equal,
potentially
spiritually equal
in the Allah site, in the sight of
God.
I had 2
and every Muslim, every convert learns this. Are
there any converts around here? Every convert learns
this very quickly. And I got 2 dramatic
lessons of this
very early on.
And I've had many many lessons since. But
I remember my first. I was sitting in
a masjid in, San Francisco. I've had been
a Muslim for about 3 weeks.
And so black American brothers, some African American
brothers came over from, Oakland.
And one of the brothers, the imam of
the masjid there, he gave a speech. And
after the speech, he finished his speech. It
was the question and answer period.
And I was sitting there with my white
American friend Grant
and Abdul Alim, that's a lecturer, was sitting
there with 4 brothers from Oakland, African and
American brothers. And then one of the,
student Muslim students raised his hand who was
from overseas and he asked him and Abdul
Alim had been a Muslim now for about
10 years. He asked him, brother Abdul
Lim,
do you feel that Islam has affected your
life?
And Abdul Lim just shook his head.
He just shook his head like when I
have to answer a math question 10 times
in a row, you know, when somebody just
keeps asking it again and again and again.
And then he looked
at us across the room, Grant and I,
and he pointed to us.
He said, you know, no one
it's going bananas on. No one
understands, he said.
Should I get away?
That's a loud microphone
for such a small audience. We could turn
it off. You could still hear me, really.
Is that okay?
I won't go so close.
Abdul Lim,
he looked at Grant,
right at Grant and I, Grant and me.
And he said, no one understands.
No one could possibly understand.
How much?
How much?
Wow.
Well, this is sometimes some of the microphone
is
Yeah. We turn we turn the mics off
and they're still
It's
He said.
Maybe I can move.
He
said.
We're Black Panthers, but I was a member
of a white gang.
And
we used to fight I never fought him
personally, but I used to fight the black
men in our young black men and they
used to fight us. And that those fights
used to get very violent and out of
control. And then when I was listening to
his speech, I was remembering all that. And
now I was sitting with this young this
young man and he's sitting with me as
brothers, and we met and then we embraced
after that lecture, and we've been very good
friends ever since.
And it just shows you Islam's great unifying
capacity.
Another
interesting instance of this,
since that one got erased from the tape,
let me present this because Hamid likes to
get sound bites.
But this one affected me very deeply. Again,
I had been a Muslim for now going
out about 6 weeks, 7 weeks.
And I don't know what happened. But one
night we had a lecture in the Masjid
and some African American brothers were there, I
was there, Grant was there. Another white American
brother.
There were brothers from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Palestine,
Egypt,
Sri Lanka, Pakistan. It was crowded.
There was some difference of opinion. I can't
remember what it was. I know it was
political.
It was some political issue. And then
everything just erupted.
The
Saudi brothers started yelling at the Palestinian brothers.
The Palestinians started yelling back at the Saudi
brothers. The Americans started taking sides. The blacks
were against the whites.
The Sri Lankan brothers were siding with the
Pakistani brothers, with the Saudi brothers, against the
Palestinians and the Americans. People were really starting
to get angry. I remember some of the
things that were being said. Oh, you Saudis,
why don't you go back to the sand
from where you came? And the Saudis said,
what do you know you, Amriqis? You just
became Muslim just the other day. And the
white brothers said to the black brothers, yeah,
but you know, you began with, Elijah Muhammad
and all that sort of stuff. What do
you know? You've been a Muslim for 2
weeks. And it was just going bananas.
People were shouting at each other. It was
getting angry. And you know Americans, when they
get angry, they like to throw punches. And
I swear punches were about to get thrown
any second. I mean, faces were red, veins
were popping out. I saw the fist. Grant's
fist was back like this. Couple of those
black American brothers, they were ready for it.
We were ready to go back to the
sixties again and have a street battle right
there in the Masjid and drag those rest
of those Middle Eastern brothers in with us.
And we had gotten to such a rage
and such a point of tension, and then
all of a sudden, this little guy, Mohammed,
I think his name was, and he was
from Palestine. He never says anything. He's the
most quiet guy in the mosque. I don't
even think any of us realized he was
there. He stood up and then while we're
all standing up, ready to come pounce on
each other, and he stood up and he
yelled,
We all looked at each other. What did
he say?
And he shouted again,
Say it brother.
We sort of looked shocked as he's, okay.
We said,
He said, say it again.
We
all said,
He said again, with feeling.
We all repeat
it,
Come on now.
Again we shouted
it,
He said, Brothers,
that's what we're about and that's what binds
us.
Just look at us.
And we all looked at each other.
And now all of a sudden people were
hugging and asking for forgiveness and everything like
that. But he sees the point.
That
doesn't mean you just worship God.
But that we are brothers and equals
in that worship of God. And sisters as
well. Brothers and sisters.
Here it goes. It's going again.
Seems that whenever I get emotional, that's what
happens.
These, 2 demands,
the oneness of god
and the oneness of men and unity of
men under God,
have throughout history
been very difficult
to keep together
in any religious tradition.
Say that again, Jeff.
Throughout history, these two demands of
monotheism,
the worship of 1 God and the unity
of all mankind
under God
have been very difficult to preserve both these
implications
of monotheism
in any religious tradition. And the Quran gives
us 2
very powerful and dramatic illustrations.
What 2 communities am I talking about?
The community of the Jewish faith, Judaism,
and Christianity.
These are the 2,
ultimate examples
that the Quran provides.
As you all know,
the children of Israel
is a people in the as presented in
the Quran
who throughout most of their history, much of
their history, are uniquely receptive
to monotheism,
to the worship of 1 God. And yet
they live in a predominantly
pagan environment.
Outside influences
frequently penetrate their community. We see it again
and again in the Quran, causing them to
waver from the teachings of their prophets.
In the Quran, they appear as a nation
in a constant struggle
between
worship of 1 God and heathen pressures.
And this in part explains
their need, the children of Israel's needs to
insulate themselves and isolate themselves from the social
surroundings.
And it explains their attempt to preserve and
protect
the racial and cultural purity.
Now, that in itself is not bad but,
as the Quran presents them, the children of
Israel came to see themselves
as God's chosen people. Not just in the
sense that he favored them with many prophets,
but in the sense that they were somehow
better than the rest of humanity. That God
made something like a superhuman
race.
A race that is above and beyond the
other races.
A race created for the benefit of all
the other races.
A superior race.
And they saw themselves as God's chosen people
to the exclusion of all others and as
sons of God in the Old Testament sense,
those
especially loved by God. Well, all else are
just there.
Because of this,
they can never,
the Quran says, except prophet Muhammad, peace be
upon him, as the final messenger of God
because of his non Jewish origins.
Even though he confirmed the essential message in
their possession.
The Quran continuously
blames the children of Israel for their few
refusal in this regard,
and for their arrogance, and for their exclusiveness.
In short,
as the Quran presents
Judaism,
its problem with Judaism is that although it
was successful in preserving
belief in one God,
it failed
and was unable to accept
the oneness of all mankind
under God.
Christianity,
in the Quran,
situation is almost completely the opposite, the reverse.
Christianity
goes back to the same biblical roots. It's
such a brilliant example. Of course, it is.
I mean,
it's Revelation.
But much more than Judaism,
Christianity is a universal religion. It readily embraces
all mankind.
Sometime
in the history of Christianity, sometimes it went
too far in that.
It became violent in its attempt to get
every everyone within its fold.
Christianity gets its solidity, its coherence from an
intense spiritual yearning to be known loved by
God.
So while the Jews and the pagans of
the Arabian Peninsula
were stubbornly closed to the any message that
departed from their tradition,
we see the Quran chose the Christians to
be more easily affected by the spiritual force
of the Quran.
And so you see tears streaming down their
eyes when certain verses are recited, etcetera.
But the difficulty that such universal face as
Christianity
have,
the difficulty they encounter is what?
It's the great diversity of people they bring
in.
Now why is that a problem?
Because when you bring in all these people,
you just don't bring their bodies.
You bring their language.
You bring their ideas.
You bring their backgrounds.
You bring their symbols. You bring their cultural
practices.
All these things could potentially pervert the religion.
All their former religious ideas, all their cultural
background, everything. They are they're gonna see interpret
things through that experience.
And so that's always a potential danger
to corrupt the purity of the teachings of
the religion.
From the Muslim view, such was the case
with Christianity.
And from the Quran's point of view too.
Although it
eagerly embraces
all mankind,
It compromises in its tenets,
pure monotheism,
and leads too easily to associating others with
God. It's language,
which was inherited from,
the Hellenic culture
from which it sprang,
use language that's very symbolic,
very,
high in the sky, but it's very easy
to,
the symbolic language for people to allow strange
interpretations into the faith. At least as we
must have seen. Words like son of God,
trinity, etcetera. 3 hypostasis.
You know, all these things are that come
in,
from the surrounding culture. Ideas that come from
the mystery cults. Ideas that seem to be
they it shares with Mithraism and some of
the other religions in the region. As Christianity
embraced all these peoples and invited them into
the religion, those ideas did, at least from
the Muslim point of view, affect and distort
the teachings of the Prophet. So here we
see 2 different sides of the coin. 1
community
successfully preserving
faith in 1 God, belief in 1 God,
but incapable of accepting the oneness of man
under God.
The other religion
community
faithfully
embracing all mankind for the most part, but
corrupting, at least from the Muslim point of
view and the Quran's point of view,
allowing corruption to seep in into the idea
of 1 God.
In this way, the Jewish Christian experience exemplifies
the dilemma faced by all of the great
world religions.
Monotheism or universalism.
Where one or the other was compromised in
an attempt to preserve
1 or the other. Are you following me
so far?
Islam struggled
and still struggles with these internal tensions.
And in the past, extreme measures were to
be taken by Muslim scholars to protect protect
both implications of monotheism.
Philosophical
and mystical speculation were discouraged.
All aspects
of life were organized and put into Islamic
law
and systematized.
All innovative thought forbidden through the adoption of
Taqleeb,
blind acceptance of early scholarly opinion.
And pressures would continue to rise throughout the
ages, but as the Islamic mainstream for the
most part succeeded in placing the major sources
and ideas of mainstream Islam on ice,
and preserve them in a type of suspended
animation,
which eventually be
transformed to modern man to us today intact.
Now, whatever the cost of Muslim civilization, of
the severe steps taken by Muslim scholars of
the past, and people like to argue about
that,
the 2 major features of Islamic
theism of Tawhid,
the oneness of God
and the oneness of man under God, was
successfully united in Islam
and passed on to future generations.
And to my knowledge, I've studied just about
every major world religion, at least from my
point of view when I studied the many
world religions.
Islam was the only one I ever saw
that successfully
combined both implications of monotheism.
The oneness of God and the oneness of
man.
The 2 essential,
implications of that.
And for Muslims, this is one of the
ways
one of the ways how God through Islam
completed his favor unto mankind.
Okay.
This will only take 5 more minutes.
Our critic says, not so fast.
Okay.
Other religions had corrupted monotheism.
Either one implication or the other.
I'm willing to accept that.
Islam
faithfully preserved
both essential implications of monotheism
with the coming of Prophet Muhammad, peace be
upon him, and through future generations thereafter.
I'm willing to accept that.
But
why no future prophet?
I mean, you've explained to me what Islam
accomplished, what the mission of prophet Muhammad accomplished,
but I still don't see
why no future prophet? How does that relate
to this?
Are you following
me? But, this only takes a minute.
Right? You've probably already figured out the answer.
Just
consider the reverse.
Consider the opposite.
Let's say
prophethood
wasn't sealed with prophet Muhammad, peace be upon.
Let us say that the door
to Prophethood was left open.
That when Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him,
died,
the Muslims felt that other possible prophets could
come after Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.
What would been what would have been the
result?
Well,
every other religion has known it.
Deluded
individuals,
self diluted individuals,
sometimes self interested
individuals
would arise to claim they were prophets.
Every religion you have the people that do
this. Right? They arise from the community and
say, I am a prophet.
David Quresh,
Jim Jones,
the Maharishi,
etcetera. They all rise up and say, I
am a prophet.
And as Muslims,
if the door to Prophet was left open
when Prophet Muhammad died, peace be upon him,
we have to consider it.
If you got up tomorrow and said, I'm
a prophet,
I've received revelation from God,
I would have to at least hear what
you hear you out.
Okay. Then you tell me what your proclamation,
and then I have to consider it and
weigh it.
And I might become one of your followers.
And then you might arise and say, but
I am a prophet.
I have received revelation from God.
Jimmy Swaggart did. I have received revelation from
God. Then I'd have to, I Jimmy Swaggart
claims, I would have to consider your point
of view.
And then some of us would go over
to you,
and someone would go over here, and some
of us would go over here, and some
of us would go over here.
Why?
Because
the door that we are anticipating are coming
profit.
So any person who makes that claim, he's
bound to draw followers.
And we can see the religion fragmenting. Followers
of this guy who claimed he was a
prophet. Followers of this guy who claimed he
was a prophet. Every religion has known it
and every religion has had to deal with
it. And every religion has been fragmented and
disintegrated by it.
But,
Islam
with the ceiling of prophethood with prophet Mohammed,
peace be upon him,
tremendously
restrain that tendency.
Any Muslim leader today,
he could gain
the devotion of his followers. He could gain
the supreme respect of his followers.
They might be willing to die for him,
to protect him.
They might love him tremendously,
but he would never get that un
that complete and total
submission,
that complete and total confidence
that divine
messengership
demands.
The minute a Muslim scholar or a Muslim
leader says, I am a prophet. I've received
revelation from God.
I have a new scripture. I have a
new revelation.
Every Muslim knows
that he is gone.
He is outside of this religion.
From the scholar in the citadel to the
Muslim on the street, the minute you hear
somebody say, I'm a prophet of God. I'm
the messenger of God.
Stay away from that guy.
Alright? Remember Rashad Khalifa?
People were curious about it, what he was
saying. He's doing all this strange stuff with
the computer.
Actually, I looked at his stuff, I wasn't
impressed at all. But in any case, he
was doing all this stuff with the computer.
People were naturally curious. He was making bold
and radical claims. People wanted to know what
he had to say.
Even the even I, I thought it was
a crack butt, but I still wanted to
know what he had to say.
But
the minute he sent out that bulletin saying,
I am the messenger of God,
everybody said, this guy's nuts.
And a few years later, he died died
with only a handful of followers
because every Muslim knows, once he made that
claim,
he's crazy.
Right? And he's not gonna bring many followers
with him.
Non Muslim Scholars called the Karyanis, the Baha'is,
the Druze.
They call them Islamic sects.
Muslims don't call them Islamic sects.
We don't consider them
alternative perspectives in Islam. We don't even consider
them heretical perspectives in Islam. Muslims consider them
completely outside of Islam.
And these movements had won very few
converts from the Muslim community.
By and large, they've gotten their converts from
the Zoroastrian community, the Christian community, various other
communities, but they've won very very few the
Muslim community. Especially when you think there's a
1,000,000,000 Muslims out there, they've won virtually none.
Why?
Because all these groups claim
a prophet after prophet Muhammad,
peace be upon him.
So when Allah sealed
prophethood with prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him,
it was a key moment in history
because with the mission of prophet Muhammad,
he brought both implications of monotheism
to mankind
and guaranteed their preservation.
The oneness of God, the worship of only
one God, and the unity of all mankind
under God. There would be a continual witness
of that on Earth.
And the only community
that I think, at least, witnesses that in
pure unadulterated
form on earth.
That's our charge. That's our duty as
Muslims, to be a continual witness to both
those implications.
And with the sealing of prophethood with Prophet
Muhammad, peace be upon him, Allah guaranteed
that that community would stay together
through thick and thin, or at least we
should,
Remain unified
and by sealing the prophet hood with prophet
Mohammed, Allah guaranteed in his infinite wisdom and
knowledge as he says in the Quran, Allah
is all knowing
when he talks about the sealing of prophethood
with prophet Muhammad because he knows what we're
like. This by sealing it with prophet Muhammad,
he protected us from the fragmentation, the disintegration
that would naturally set in if he didn't
seal Prophet Muhammad.
So this was
a powerful way that Allah brought both implications
of monotheism to mankind for his own benefit
and guaranteed its preservation.
When we Muslims
make the Shahada,
and we do. As a matter of fact,
we state
17 times a day in our daily prayers.
We all know
that when we say that and we say
the second half of that statement, Mohammed Daimler
Solullah, Mohammed is the prophet of Allah. We
all say and we all acknowledge when we
say that implicit that prophet Muhammad, peace be
upon him, is the last not only the
prophet, but the last prophet.
And the one that all that we the
only one that we should follow at this
point
in the revelation of the Quran. Can I
give you one last example of, and then
I'll let you go to sleep?
Because you guys
really look tired. But this example touched me
very deeply. It takes me about 3 minutes
to describe.
It's so easy for us to this day
in our to acknowledge and preserve one implication
of Tawhid and neglect its corollary, the oneness
of man under God. I see it time
and time again in our Muslim community
and I've even seen it with myself on
many occasions.
Here's my own personal example. How easy it
is,
sometimes in our zeal, to hold on to
one
to contaminate the other.
I was on a pilgrimage
a few years ago
and I
went to Saudi Arabia,
worked in a university there for a year.
I don't like to travel. I don't like
desert heat.
I I just I'm the type of person
who likes to stay home. But I went
there because I thought at the very least,
I'll get to go to the pilgrimage. It
was a miserable year for me.
It was just terrible.
And after I made the pilgrimage in July,
couple weeks later, I'd be getting on a
plane and going back to the United States.
But I was so emotionally and psychologically
exhausted.
You don't know how many battles I fought
there in Saudi Arabia when I was there.
The people are are wonderful people, by the
way. But, you know, cultural differences and things
like that.
But in any
case in any case,
I got to that pilgrimage. I was weary,
exhausted, frustrated, exasperated, but I thought, if anything
good is gonna come out of this, it's
gonna be the pilgrimage, and I am gonna
do it right. And I studied for months
before I got there, memorized everything.
I knew exactly what to do. I got
to that pilgrimage.
Well, it was it started out beautifully.
Brothers,
even sisters all over the world, everywhere I
went. Are you are you an American? Yes.
I'm an American.
Could you tell me how you became a
Muslim? I would stand there and start telling
people in the big big crowd around.
Made me feel sort of special. I didn't
know to see another guy with blond hair
blue eyes like me,
dramatic
looking. The whole time I was there until
the very end, I saw one guy sort
of past me, looked at me.
But
but but in any case, I could see
what I have. I felt like a novelty
almost, you know. But unfortunately, I got the
famous pilgrimage flu about
12 hours into the pilgrimage. And by the
second day, I had it big time. I
had a temperature of a 105. The heat
was getting up to a 120 something. You
know, if you're in Midna or Mecca, Mecca,
there's these huge cliffs on the side, and,
you know, you're in like this tiny little
valley, like a pot almost. And when that
heat comes down, it's a 125 outside. It's
like a 150
ground level. Alright. Maybe I'm exaggerating, but it
just the heat just just rises from the
ground and it's tar now. It's tar, the
soil. So it just bakes there and that
heat rises up at 105 fever. It's getting
sicker and sicker. I was tired explaining to
people how I became a Muslim. I didn't
wanna talk to anybody anymore. I was sort
of hiding my face hoping nobody would see
me. You know, the days went by. We
got to the 4th day, the 5th day.
I just used to hide, try to get
out of the heat. The temperature was getting
worse. We sat in those refrigerated buses. I
felt like it was in a a freezer.
I felt like I was sitting on ice
cubes. I was shivering so much. I'd go
outside and walk, and I'm just sweating like
crazy.
I'm getting sicker and sicker day by day.
Got to the, you know, through the stones,
got all that done, just got her over
with, got hit in the head. I was
just
I was just so beaten up. I'll tell
you, you know, I thought the fasting was
hard. Praying 5 times a day, I I
I love. But, you know, that's a challenge.
But the pilgrimage, I tell you. You know,
it may be easier to get there now
than it ever was before, but it's harder
to perform all the rituals than it ever
was before. I mean, I got into that
masjid after I went back to the mosque,
than it ever was before. I mean, I
got into that message after I went back
to the mosque at 6th day.
And, you know, the last time I'm gonna
visit the mosque, then I'm gonna pack up,
leave, and go back to Jeddah from there
to the United States.
I got to that mosque, and it was
more crowded than ever. I mean, it seemed
like all 2 and a half 1000000 pilgrims
were in there. And they said it was
the hottest day of the pilgrimage. And I
was going around and making the rounds about
the Kaaba, and, you know, the crowd is
so huge. You just you can't you don't
even bother walking. Just let them just sort
of drag you along, you know. I mean,
it's just the suppress of humanity just moves
you along and here I am sick, you
know.
You could hardly stand there and just be
moved back and forth,
you know, going around. Same thing when I
make the, you know, side between Safa and
Mara 7 times. Took me I've done it
before, you know, just Umrah, and I've done
the whole
thing in 45 minutes. This day, it took
me 2 and a half hours. You know,
I just had to wait for the mass
of humanity to get through. K. So I
finally make it down dripping. I'm not not
the type of guy who sweats. I was
dripping hard to tell. I mean, I was
just covered in water. I
mean, everything. My my clothes were all wet.
I just got out of there and, you
know, I wanted to get a deep breath,
cool breath of fresh air. That heat just
blasts at you like a huge gigantic hair
blower. You know, it just hits you in
the face. I saw an air conditioned bus
come down, you know, from MENA.
Got in the bus.
Thought that would take me back to where
my own bus was. I'd get off and
finally leave.
Well, I got in a bus and I
didn't wanna talk to anybody. I purposely picked
a seat in the back of the bus
where no one would bug me. I just
figured I'll just go back here. I'll close
my eyes. I'll let pretend I'm sleeping. Nobody
will bother me. I'll just, you know, get
off and get up.
But sure enough, I get in the bus.
I sit down. I lie there. I keep
one eye slightly open seeing if anybody is
looking at me. A face turns around from
the front of the bus. He's looking back
at me. I think, oh, no. Please don't
come this way. And look again. Yes. He's
walking. He's walking down the aisle. Please don't
sit next to me. Please don't sit next
to his head. Boom. I feel the body
sitting next to me.
Maybe he just didn't like the front of
the bus. I was thinking I was hoping,
you know. Maybe he just won't bug me.
Maybe he'll think I'm sleeping.
Close both eyes tight, please. I don't wanna
hear those words. And then Jerna,
are you an American?
I'll just pretend I didn't hear him. I
Close my eyes a little tighter. Excuse me.
Are you an American?
I open one eye just slightly.
Yes.
Yes. I am.
Maybe that'll be enough, I'm hoping.
He says,
would you mind telling me how you became
a Muslim?
The man's name, his name was Ahmed. He
was from
Bangladesh.
I thought, okay. I'll tell him. I reduced
it down to, like, a 15 second explanation
by now. I used to tell him 5,
10 minutes the first day. Now it was
a 30 second spot. Make a little sound
bite.
Told him while I was an atheist, I
had several objections about religion. I read the
Quran.
Resolved them. I found much more in the
Quran. Actually, once those barriers were broken down,
I was moved deeply and I went to
the Masjid and became a Muslim.
I thought I thought, well, maybe that'll kill
it. That'll just about do it. I look
up at my friend
and I just looked through the my eyelashes
at the guy. Sure enough, tears are flowing
down his cheeks.
And I looked at him and I felt
so
guilty.
Because
I always hoped that God would give me
that
spiritual quality that something that small could move
me so deeply
as this moved.
I mean, here I butchered the explanation, reduced
it to 20 seconds, said it arrogantly and
exasperatedly,
and still he was that moved.
And then Ahmed looked at me
and he said,
you know, prophet Ibrahim was much different than
you and I.
He had such sincerity,
such faithfulness to Allah. And when Allah told
him to do something,
he
his personality was so molded by Allah that
he would just do it without question.
Knowing that there was a wisdom
and a genius and a knowledge behind it.
He said, you know, when Allah told prophet
Ibrahim to go out and make the call
for the pilgrimage,
There
was no one else there.
Maybe a few
sheep herders,
couple members of his family.
And he's told to go out and call
for the pilgrimage.
It was you or I.
Ahmed said, we wouldn't we'd say, what? There's
nobody here.
We We'd have second thoughts. But Prophet Ibrahim
had such sincerity,
such trust
that he knew that there was a wisdom
behind it. And he just walked out to
the center of this hot valley and he
called the Adan
and called and called for the pilgrims.
And he said, and if only prophet Ibrahim
could see today,
people from all over the world,
2 and a half 1000000
thronging
to this place,
responding to that call.
He said, and who and if he can
only see
2 brothers,
one from the United States of America
and the other one from Bangladesh,
sitting as brothers
on a bus back to Mena.
How that would touch his
heart?
And I looked at after it, and now
I was choking back the feelings. You know,
Americans don't like to cry. So I was
really worth this. I was working, you know.
You know, I'm trying to just hold it
in, you know, not let them show any
feelings
or not. And I and I was
successful. But I tell you the truth that
when he said that, I felt I had
to just repeat the entire pilgrimage again.
Because, you know, throughout that pilgrimage,
I had done every ritual
formally right. I had rehearsed them for months.
I got myself all worked up about it.
I was gonna make sure that I was
gonna worship Allah
perfectly that
pilgrimage.
But by that
last day
in Mecca,
that last day I had forgotten somehow
through it all.
The second most important
implication
of the worship of 1 God. That we
are all brothers and sisters
as Muslims
and as and in humanity
under God's authority and under God's love.
And it took Ahmed on that last day
to remind me of that.
And I thank Allah for sending.
I only wish
well, Allah knows best. I guess that's the
way he wanted to teach. Me. But for
my own sake, if I would've had it
otherwise, maybe I would've had him come earlier
and tell me that maybe that's the time
I needed it most.
Thank you. Thank you. Can you load the
sound a little bit on on that one?
Yeah.
Thank you, doctor Jeffrey. And may Allah bless
you for your trip. I guess,
his
experience in Hajj
is an experience of, an American making Hajj,
which makes a big difference
than people who are raised in the desert
and people who
are used to the heat of the desert.
And,
Insha'Allah,
next time
you won't have the same difficulties, hopefully, Insha'Allah.
We are gonna have some time for the
questions.
So please,
if you have you can write your question,
bring it to me if you don't wanna
speak speak out, or you can come to
the mic and,
please make your question.
Can can you help us turn the lights
on? I don't know who turned them off.
Well, it's better you come and speak from
there.
I turned it off because it's Yeah. Sorry
about the audio problems.
Oh, it's okay. You don't have to do
it again.
Yeah. Please.
Any questions, please?
Yes.
What's this word? Use this one. No. It's
not working.
Hello? Hello?
Just take it take it here. Okay.
There is there is no mic working in
the hole. Unfortunately, the the
sound system here Because there's people out there.
Got some problems. And we try to figure
out where the speakers the control of the
speakers are.
So there is no marks that are working.
So you can speak while you're sitting where
you are.
I'd like to come to that. For this
lecture.
And I would like to give you that
elaborate a little bit
book? No.
No. It's just from my first of all,
I,
I I
just I just read the Quran, you know.
If you look at the history of,
the children of Israel as presented in the
Quran, you're right. They are wavering,
you know, between,
adherence to the idea of the oneness of
God,
And then,
they
corruption sets in, another prophet comes, brings them
back, corruption
comes back, corruption comes back.
This is their history, you can see it
as a community constantly battling
with this tension,
you know, between belief in one god and
the pagan influences around them.
But from what I know of Judaism, they
were finally successful
in preserving
and guarding that idea, the oneness of God.
This much
Judaism,
I think any, even Muslim scholar who knows
Judaism.
It's not it's not up here.
Any Muslim scholar who knows Judaism
any scholar of Judaism
anybody who knows Judaism will know that they
were finally successful in preserving
belief in the oneness of God.
But as Jews will also tell you, that
they are not, they don't easily and readily
embrace others into the religion.
To this day.
And,
I've had I've had a good friend that
once tried to be enter the Jewish religion,
and they told him that
he would not be really totally fully accepted
as a Jew, but in a few generations
his children might.
You know, a few generations down the line.
So, the point of it is though, as
the Quran presents the
Jews
and as we know about the Jews, they
were successful in preserving the oneness of God,
disbelief.
But they fail
in accepting
the oneness and spiritual
spiritual and essential equality of all mankind.
This this was the reason why they couldn't
accept prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him. So
Quran says that this confirmed the message confirmed
what was what was in their possession.
But they couldn't accept it because why?
It's non Jewish origins.
You see what I mean? So what I
was saying was the Jewish religion
was capable of
preserving one
fundamental
implication of monotheism, but they failed in the
other.
The Christians on the other hand are a
very universal religion. They readily seek
new Christians at conference,
and they always have.
And they have always been a very spiritual
religion.
And you see them very moved easy easily
spiritually in the Quran. The Quran itself admits
that. Even says as opposed to the Jews,
for example, it says the Christians are humble.
They're
humble.
And the tears flow from their eyes when
they hear the truth of what's being recited
before them. So they are very,
much as a community, they've been much more
willing to embrace mankind,
and they've always been a universal religion.
But as I
criticizes many of these corrupt beliefs that the
Quran says are corrupted beliefs that came into
the religion.
Corrupted terminology, trinity, son of God, etcetera, etcetera,
etcetera.
So
the point is, is that Christianity was able
to embrace all mankind, but it was unable
to
preserve in its pure form,
belief in the oneness of God. It's too
easily corrupted. It leads people too easily
into
false ideas about God.
The terminology of Christianity, it's very clear that
this is true. You know, there's many Christians
today, if you walk up to an average
Christian on the street, you may walk up
to a Christian scholar and he could say,
no, there's only one God.
And we pray to God through Jesus in
Jesus' name,
you know, and you're trying to think, Well,
I mean, is he or is he? I
mean, what does this but for the average
guy in the street, this is very confusing.
And you can walk up to the common
Christian, and all he does is hear the
phrase, 3 persons and one God. He hears
the phrase, he's taught
son of God.
He's taught God incarnate.
He learns his terminology
and many a Christian, if you approach them,
I would say the majority of common Christians.
If you ask them, does Christianity
believe that Jesus is divine? Does it believe
that Jesus is God's son? Does it believe
that Jesus should be worshiped? Does it believe
that Jesus
is
God?
Many Christians will say yes.
And they admit that they pray to him.
And of course for Muslim, this is worship
of a man. So the point of it
is is
Christianity may have embraced all mankind,
but it corrupted
or it's too easily corruptible when it comes
to belief in one guy.
Are you following me?
The only you can look at the rest
of the world religions. I did. And I
don't mean to criticize them. I'm just making
a case from a Muslim perspective. I'm not
here to put down other people's beliefs.
But when I studied Hinduism, for example,
I found that Hindu Hinduism allows for the
belief in
many deities and many gods.
It doesn't insist on it. There are even
some Hindus that are monotheists.
Some are monos
and some are pagans.
But Christian Hinduism allows for all that.
So, to me,
there's another sign of a type of corruption
there. Not only that, it has a caste,
or it's it's throughout much of its history
had a caste system,
which violates the oneness and unity and spiritual
quality of all mankind under God.
A has. How to get out of the
cycle of suffering.
It brings God into the picture hardly at
all.
You could actually
never even discuss God
and just follow the program.
So Buddhism sort of got the problem I've
always had with Buddhism is it sort of
ignores God.
Certainly is not
the type of monotheism that the Quran
says that we should believe in.
Taoism,
Confucianism, 2 of the other major world religions.
To me, they seem more like philosophies than
religion. God hardly ever arrived on the scene.
Let's talk about the balance in nature, the
balance in creation.
The the yin the yin and the yang.
Everything is has a balance.
The causality in nature, etcetera, etcetera. That's all
very nice. It's a beautiful philosophy. It's probably
a lot of truth in it, but where
is god?
You know? So,
my point is, is that the only religion
that insists on both as both implications of
Tawhid,
and has preserved both the implications, and has
been a witness to both the implications
ever since it first received them. It's the
Muslim community.
And this is part of their mission honor.
I hope that answers your question in part.
Thank you. Here is a question from, the
sisters here.
Oh, what,
what's your best advice as far as, an
American Muslim? As as an American Muslim, for
us who was, who were born and raised
in Islam,
Muslim cultures,
what's your best advice for us who wanna
make, dawah
for, American people who want to
share their
point of view with American people, their religious
point of view, perspective with American people?
That's a very hard question.
I would say,
Maybe the Jibwon.
Maybe
the example of the Jibwon that you gave
before.
Yeah.
One example I always tell people, really, I
really
deep in my heart I believe the best
thing you could do
is
number 1,
the first thing not to do.
First thing you should try to avoid is
don't answer a question if you're not sure
about the answer.
Muslims are notorious for doing that.
Giving answers with great authority
when they really are not quite certain about
what they're saying.
Maybe it's something their grandmother told them. Maybe
it's something they heard somebody can make it
a Friday prayer.
Most of them somehow feel that when you
ask them a question, they have to have
an answer.
And so they rush out and blurt out
something. They feel that sometimes to have any
answer is better than to have no answer.
When in fact, to admit you have no
answer is usually better than give a wrong
answer.
That's one thing to avoid.
Second thing, try not to mix
and if you're unsure, just leave the matter
alone. Try not to mix sort of
cultural adaptations to the religion with the essentials
of the religion.
You know what I mean?
All of us, all of our cultures,
adapted.
All most of us are children of converts.
All of us are children of converts to
Islam.
Most of us are children of converts to
Islam,
and those converts I mean descendants of converts.
And those original
Muslims that we trace our lineage back came
from vastly different cultures. Each of those cultures
had adapted to the religion,
made that adaptation,
that interpretation through the eyes of that culture.
That doesn't mean that how this fellow's culture
adapted to the this precept of the religion
was wrong,
but that doesn't mean this other cultural adaptation
here was wrong either.
Doesn't mean that his adaptation was an interpretation
as irreligious,
but it doesn't mean his is irreligious either.
They are seeing it from very different points
of view and circumstances.
But what we have a tendency to do
as Muslims
is insist that our point of view,
our particular
cultural perspective
on a certain religious question
is the only one.
And we insist on it, and we dogmatize
it, and we present that to an American
non Muslim as a fact, as an essential.
And very often we're doing tremendous damage
because it doesn't allow
for any him, for any room to see
or relate to that
part of the religion, you shut the door.
He's can cannot possibly relate to it because
he can't become that enter that cultural perspective.
That's the second thing. 3rd thing,
try to stress the essentials of the religion.
And that of course you have to we
have to study and learn the essential precepts
of our religion.
Try to stress those. Most important, I would
suggest that you should do what somebody did
with me
once,
and
as somebody who's when you're dealing with somebody
who's sincerely and really intently interested in Islam,
knowing what Islam represents,
I would really, boldly,
put forth this,
that you, one time I'll just add in
a short story. One time I and I'll
mention this tomorrow. One time I got very
frustrated. I was discussing something with Muslims.
And I
they weren't making sense and I kept cornering
them and trapping them and they were getting
very frustrated, and they'd say, you know, well,
God did this and this. And I'd say,
yeah, but if he did that, that doesn't
make sense because this contradicts that. And then
they'd say, oh, yeah, but that. And I
was they were getting run into circles and
they were really starting to sound kinda crazy
and foolish.
Finally,
the smartest one among
them said to me, Look, doctor,
we don't really know.
The questions they're asking are beyond anything we've
ever considered.
If you really wanna know the answer,
why don't you just read
Quran?
Because, you know, we're human beings, we're trying
to explain it to you. But we believe
that the Quran is God's
revealed word to all mankind.
You're getting our
meager understanding that Quran and we're trying to
answer your question filtered through it. Go to
the source.
And I did.
And I became a Muslim.
So the point of it is is is
that if you're in doubt,
back away and obtain more knowledge, or send
the person to somebody you have feel have
a greater knowledge on that issue. And second,
don't be discouraged from,
telling the person to get and you can
find them in any US library to go
get a translation of the Quran with commentary
and interpretation of the Quran with commentary,
and you could suggest, and that's very important,
know some very good ones, ones that people
who have converted to Islam thought were very
good.
Find out from them what worked for them,
and, I would try to send people in
that direction, really.
I would send them I usually tell people
myself,
I have a list of books in mind
that I think are very good.
I have, some interpretations of the Quran that
I think are very good. And I usually
tell Americans I usually begin by answering their
questions very whatever they have very shortly, and
then I tell them, you know, this book,
this book, this book is probably,
quite good.
And this interpretation of the Quran by so
and so, I enjoyed very much. And then
they could go ahead and if they're interested,
and truly interested, they could look at those,
and
without any coercion or pressure, consider them.
And I think that's, a very good way
to go about it.
Okay. Any more questions?
Yes,
bro.
Thank you, sir.
And,
you're,
through
the
Yeah. Well, no. Actually, I did mention that.
I mentioned that as one of the classical
arguments,
but I said that still many non Muslims
that I've talked to, and I've told them
this, I mean, I've presented that in front
of audiences, exactly what you're talking, and I
did mention it along the way. Maybe you
just missed it or maybe the language I
was using was
but I did really mention I mentioned how
that,
Muslims will say that this was the unadulterated
word of God, perfect revelation. There's no need
for a revelation after this, because now this
is the final perfect form of revelation
preserved in its original language, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
It's not a corrupted text. In any case,
I was trying to make that point, but
I was saying that still,
a non Muslim will ask, yes, okay, but
what about interpreting that message?
You know, and then the Muslim will say,
well the sunnah, we have the sunnah. Yeah,
but the sunnah didn't cover everything, the non
Muslim will say.
No. No. Not humanism. But the more okay.
So then we go from the Quran, then
we go to the sunnah, then we go
to the Sharia. That now the Sharia didn't
cover everything that comes up in modern times,
so we have to revive that Sharia.
And we have to repeat the effort made
by ancient scholars.
But in that process, human decisions are being
made, human interpretations are being made.
I'm just presenting the non Muslim argument. And
the non Muslim will say, what if you
make mistakes in that?
Wouldn't it be beneficial if you had a
divinely guided messenger that put you on the
right track every time? Are you following me?
Yes, ma'am. But you have that source.
Okay?
But still you have to interpret that
source. You know, Muslims are fighting and arguing
about a 100000 issues. I mean, I'm not,
I'm not arguing that we need another messenger.
I'm just saying that I can understand the
non Muslims argument.
Wouldn't it be great if we had a
continuous permanent messenger always with us?
Him and then the next and then the
next always resolve every little legal issue we
have?
Why, I mean, wouldn't it be nice? And
if God is all merciful, why doesn't he
give us that benefit? This is their typical
argument.
Thank you. I'd like to thank you all
for your patience and your
participation. And hopefully, inshallah, tomorrow morning we'll solve
the, sound problems that we have over here.
Thank you very much and,
we'll see you inshallah in the morning.
Well, your hamlet, is this the last time
I get this lecture?