Johari Abdul-Malik – Power in Ramadan
AI: Summary ©
The upcoming month ofzik is a period where individuals will receive guidance on how to transform their society and create a way of life that is acceptable to individual. The speaker provides suggestions to transform the way people live, including reading more Quran and praying. They also encourage people to take action and participate in a program to address racism and violence, and emphasize the importance of making changes to accommodate Muslims living in public schools. The speaker also emphasizes the need to make it a habit for everyone to meet with the community and give their power and subhanabled to be part of the community.
AI: Summary ©
Beginning the khutbatul Jumma praising Allah.
And
thanking
Allah
for so many gifts.
We cannot count them.
Particular moment, none of us,
who are present
can in any way
forget
that we are at
the eve,
the dawn
of an amazingly
powerful time
for our lives.
But well, handarilla,
a powerful moment for the entire world.
We are approaching
the month of Ramadan.
And I want to share with you
that maybe from this month,
we can acquire
something
that will cause us
when we enter it, if Allah allows us
to live to enter it,
that we will leave the month of Ramadan
with a new power.
We will leave with something that
will make us better than we used to
be.
If you think about it for a moment,
there are no accidents
in the Quran.
Maybe other people have speech
and they make a mistake in their speech.
I'm not gonna mention any names.
But
the Quran don't have a mistake in its
language.
And Allah
even though Allah revealed the Quran to the
prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam in the month
of Ramadan from the beginning to the end,
that Allah chose
over 23 years
to parse out
the sections of the Quran to Raul
so that he would share it with his
companions
at times and at places that would empower
them.
You see, for us, we have the Quran.
And because we have from beginning to
end, we don't necessarily feel it, there are
times and places
and circumstances that when the words of the
Quran were
revealed, the companions felt
empowered. They felt bold.
They felt encouraged.
Allah begins the Quran
saying, Allah begins by saying read
in the name of
Allah.
Read in the name of Allah
who created you,
Allah is reminding the prophet,
he's in a cave.
I created you.
I created you from this almost nothing.
Now you, Muhammad, you're in a cave,
and the prophet is
in the cave
and he's not in the cave because he's
worried about himself.
He's not in the cave because he's afraid
that the Quran is Islamophobic.
He's not in the cave because he's hiding
out.
He's not in some kind of,
retreat.
The prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam
is in the cave
seeking
some
guidance from Allah,
looking out if anybody has ever been
to Mecca and you go into the.
You look down, you can see Mecca.
The prophet of Laysalam
is looking down into Mecca and asking Allah,
what am I going to do with these
people?
What am I going to do with these
people?
What can I do?
We know his life as as a man
before his prophethood
his
life,
and
his
sera,
we
know.
When there was corruption,
the prophet
provides guidance at.
He comes from a noble family even though
he's an orphan.
He's not in the cave because he's trying
to fix some problem with himself.
And Allah
gives him something
to go back to his people with.
Go back and tell the people.
Oh, Muhammad,
use the voice that I'm giving you
to proclaim to them
that there is knowledge
that they don't have.
There is guidance
that they
can acquire on their own. They need.
They need this book.
And if they have it,
you
will be able to transform
their society
from what it is
to what Allah wants it to be.
The power
in that experience, those words,
revealed to the Prophet
that he would then go down and tell
his people,
alhamdulillah,
not to see
the city of Mecca as it is,
but to envision a Mecca that is mukarama.
A Mecca that's going to be free of
idolatry, it's going to be free of slavery.
It's gonna be free of racism. It's gonna
be free of sexism.
It's gonna be free of the exploitation
of the poor by the rich.
That the prophet salallahu alayhi wasallam is going
to
go to that society
and provide them the guidance
to transform
that
into a life,
a way of life, a deen
that would be
acceptable to Allah.
That
this idea
came down in the month of Ramadan.
I'm going to challenge you and I
because Allah gave us this gift.
And I know maybe in Northern Virginia,
When
the halal of the new month is sited,
and for you and I, it's the month
of Ramadan, for everybody else, it'll still be
May.
And you'll think you're walking around and it's
May.
And people will be eating and drinking.
They'll be going about their business as if
it's any other day
Except you know
that Allah has created this wonderful
opportunity
in order for us to be able to
transform
community, our society, our world. In the month
of Ramadan, you're gonna do some
amazing things.
You're
gonna read more Quran than you read all
year.
You're gonna pray more than you prayed all
year.
You're gonna give more zakat than you gave
all year.
You're gonna study, memorize. You're gonna seek forgiveness.
You're gonna do everything that you can do
in the month of Ramadan
if you live there, if you live to
get there.
It's tremendous
power
that Allah will provide to you from that
month.
Words that will be transformative.
A vision of the world
different than the vision of the world that
your neighbors
believe in today.
If your neighbor is watching television,
your neighbor thinks that we can't all live
together.
Your neighbor thinks if they watch that FAUX
news,
they think that
if you're a Muslim, probably,
you're secretly
something other than a nice person.
See how I said that?
Why? Because they don't know a Muslim.
Why don't they know a Muslim?
I'm talking about your neighbor.
Because you never said to him,
You never said to him, look, I got
something for you to read.
I would say, you need to cool out.
Stop being worried.
You're going to every single person that you
know. You're killing yourself trying to make dua.
Don't worry, Allah got this.
That's the problem of the prophet, sallallahu alaihi
wasallam. Our problem is the opposite.
We're not killing ourselves to tell our neighbor.
Tell your neighbor, subhanAllah.
Oh, neighbor, do you know on Friday, look
in the sky, you're gonna see that the
moon is gonna be gone and there's gonna
be a new moon Friday.
They have full access to it. They don't
need Wi Fi or nothing.
Tell them
what's
happening.
Because without you,
they won't know.
I don't want you to turn
the masjid in Ramadan
into the cave,
where you go into the cave every night
and you you do make the Hajjid.
You've staying
all night,
part away your prayer every night.
And it's a cave.
I'm inviting you.
Invite your neighbor
like the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam
invited his neighbor.
And then tell the neighbor what it's all
about.
That there are some words that the prophet
wasallam was given from Allah.
They have power.
There's a vision
of how society should be that's outlined in
the Quran.
Justice, equality, freedom.
And then go into action.
Well,
I
I can tell
you maybe I don't know. Maybe.
Maybe when I was younger,
if you saw me in the parking lot
at night,
you might be afraid.
So who's that black man in the parking
lot over there by my car?
He doesn't look like he's Muslim. What's he
doing here?
You'd be nervous.
Now you're not nervous anymore because you say,
oh, oh, that's a Muslim brother right there.
He's not black anymore. He's Muslim.
He's probably coming to pray. He's not coming
to break in my car.
How did I get here?
The Hajil Aswar didn't fall out of the
sky and hit me in the head.
Somebody said to me,
Allah has things to teach you, man.
Why don't you come and get on in
with the program?
Ramadan
which is ordinary.
Want you to have a Ramadan
which is ordinary.
I'm asking Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, to help
us
that you have this year
a Ramadan that's extraordinary.
That when
you leave the month of Ramadan,
you will have experienced something that subhanAllah,
it will empower you.
Like, Umar Ibn Khattab
and they say he used to.
If he's going down the the alley
one way,
goes the other way
because there's a certain power
that comes from the knowledge,
from the experience,
from the commitment
to this deen that when others see it,
subhanAllah,
they will either be drawn to it because
they like the light of Allah
or they will run because they are afraid
of what will happen
if Bayt nullah,
they are on the wrong side of Allah's
justice.
I
I was listening the other day to a
good friend of mine,
and he was giving a lecture.
And you know, he said,
in the month of Ramadan,
there's one night.
And Allah chose to use a particular word
to describe this lay,
describing it as
lay little
color.
There's something
I mean, it could have been Allah could
have called anything.
But to use the word
Qadr,
people translate it as power,
Excellence.
There's something about
the event of of descending
this Quran
that should
empower us.
You know,
we're reminded a lot reminds us are the
people who have knowledge like the people who
don't have knowledge.
They're not equal.
So, Hanallah,
we have the Quran
which ought to give us power.
It ought to empower us.
It makes us act differently.
It gives us courage in the face
of our position.
See, the companions of the prophet
they would react to the Quran like it's
news.
They wanna know, oh, messenger of Allah, what's
gonna be our future?
Are we gonna be decimated by our enemies?
Are we gonna succeed? Allah says,
When is the victory gonna come? You wanna
know when we're gonna be strong.
When you see people coming
and they're accepting this deen,
we're gonna win. They're like, oh, because we
was we were worried. We saw a lot
of people on Islamophobia
not liking us.
We wanna know what our the end of
our affair is.
If you start looking at the Quran for
news
and not the the Internet for news, you're
looking at Quran for news,
I have good news for you.
Our circumstances are gonna be beautiful.
I'm a live in forever.
All I have to do is what?
For us,
This is an encouragement.
It should empower us.
I would like
to encourage you to help us to acquire
some power in this community.
This Sunday,
through
our
organizing
in this community, organizing in this community,
the chairman of the board of county supervisors,
we have had meetings with them to say,
come to Darahedra
because
we have some issues
as Muslims
who live in this community.
One of our issues,
our children, most of them go to public
school.
I know Muhammad Kabria, some of them, they
come on the weekend. They come for fast
and learn on Thursday. They come to rise
and soul. They come to the weekend, Quran
School, but most of them,
maybe 97%
of Muslim children
go to Fairfax County Public School.
So what are we gonna do?
If we have enough power,
we can tell the school board
we need some changes to accommodate
Muslim children who are in the public schools.
Just like you accommodate
Jewish children, you should accommodate other children. You
have Christmas. What about Eid?
So we had a meeting with the chairman
of the school board,
Sandy Evans.
So Sandy Evans, do you know Muslim children
in school is gonna be Ramadan?
School will still be in.
Do Muslim children have to sit in the
cafeteria
while other children eat while they're fasting?
Don't they know it's Ramadan?
And we have enough power to compel them
to meet with us.
So we said we also need to have
a meeting with the superintendent of schools
because we don't just want it to be
Jeb Stuart has something but T,
T. C. Williams doesn't have it or Marshall
High School doesn't have the accommodation.
The whole system
is ramming out everywhere.
We want and we heard from our young
people. They said, imam, we can't come out
of school for Jummah. We want to have
Jummah in our school.
There's just 10 or 15 or 20 of
us.
But if we join together,
So the superintendent of schools and the chairman
of the school board said, we'll come to
down Hidra,
and we'll meet with your community.
We told them we're gonna bring
those who are joining with us in voice,
Virginians Organized for Interfaith Community. We're gonna bring
them all together and say, we all are
gonna stand together as a community
to make sure that Muslim children
have the same civil rights and civil liberties
that everybody else has to practice their religion
freely.
And we're going to ask you to make
your commitment
to us,
not in the back office.
You know how that happens sometimes.
You meet in the back and they tell
you everything's gonna be okay
and then nothing happens.
So we told them we'll have about 4
or 500
people on Sunday
at Donald Hijra, this Sunday,
3:30 to 5 o'clock.
And we're gonna ask you,
school board,
superintendent of schools,
county supervisor,
to commit in public
to accommodate Muslim children in Ramadan,
to accommodate Jumah, to accommodate
daily salah, to make sure our girls can
wear the proper clothing they wanna wear when
they have athletics.
It's alright, man. You're really pushing it now.
I said, that's what we gotta do.
They said, alright. Well, we'll be there.
But what they're really saying is, you better
make sure your people are there.
Because if they show up to to an
empty room,
then they know where the real power isn't.
And walhamdulillah,
we have to show up
with our power.
So,
I'm inviting you.
No. I'm not inviting you.
I'm challenging you
to come and join us, bayidnila,
whether you have children
in school
or not.
Because all of these children
are our children.
This Sunday,
3:30,
right here in this room
until 5 o'clock.
To say that we stand
with our children
so that they can get the benefit of
Ramadan,
then it might empower them
to become better Muslims.
Brothers and sisters, I, you know, I apologize
it's time to end.
And, I know you have to get back
to your to your thing,
some of you.
So I ask Allah
to have mercy on to and to replace
the time that we've taken with something better.
Oh, Allah, we pray
that you might bless us
in our prayers.
Oh, Allah, that you might accept from us
our prayers and our fasting and our standing
in the night. Oh, Allah, we ask
that you forgive us of our sins and
our shortcomings, you Allah. All that we ask
that you increase us in love for you
and love for each other, you Allah. All
that we ask that you grant us the
power, subhanallah,
that we might change this world, be it
to be a pleasure to you, you Allah.
Oh, Allah, we
ask,
You Allah, we pray,
That you might cause us to live to
see the month of Ramadan.
Oh, Allah, that you might cause us, alhamdulillah,
to stand in prayer in the month of
Ramadan.
Oh, Allah, we ask, alhamdulillah,
that we be standing in.
You Allah, that you give us a lifetime
of sins forgiven, you Allah. Oh Allah, we
ask, well, alhamdulillah,
that you might accept all of our good
deeds, you Allah. Oh Allah, that we, alhamdulillah,
would have the reward of your Jannah, ma'abrar.
Oh Allah, we ask for your mercy and
your peace on our children, you Allah, who
are living in fear and anxiety, you Allah.
Empower them, you Allah, that they will feel
strong in their faith, you Allah. That they
can stand and withstand, what happened to the
challenges of our day. We ask for your
mercy on those who are living,
on the prophet Muhammad
and on his family and on his companions
and on all of the MBI, You Allah,
those who followed the way of your Haqq,
You Allah, until the day of judgment.