Khalid Latif – RISTalks Not Just Why, But Why Not Making Religion Relevant
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In the name of Allah, the gracious, the
merciful,
all praise is due to Allah, the lord
of the universe, the master of the day
of judgment.
I bear witness and testimony to the oneness
of Allah,
to his magnificence,
his omnipotence, his might, his glory,
to his being the creator and sustainer of
all things,
the giver of life,
the guider of hearts,
the master of the day of judgment.
And I bear witness to the fact that
Muhammad ibn Abdalla Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam is his servant and final messenger.
May the peace and blessings of Allah be
upon him and upon all those who choose
to tread in his path until the last
day.
It is said that in the early years
of Islam,
the situation
was quite severe for the Muslim community.
And it gets to such a dire straight
that Abu Bakr radiallahu an, he comes to
the prophet
asking him for permission
to leave so that he could find a
place where he could worship Allah freely.
And the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, he
grants
permission to his friend, Abu Bakr radiallahu an.
And as Abu Bakr is gathering his things
and he is making self ready to leave
from the city, a man who was not
Muslim by the name of Ibn Adagina
comes to him and asks him, where is
it that you are going?
And Abu Bakr radiallahu anhu, he says that
it is hard for me to worship my
lord here freely. I need to go someplace
else where I can do so.
That he has felt the persecution at the
hands of the Mushakim of Mecca.
And now this man who was not Muslim
says to him that
if you start to leave
people like yourself from our city,
then we as a society on a whole
will start to suffer.
If anyone was to cause you any problems
beyond this point,
you tell them that you are under my
protection,
but we need the likes of you to
be here.
And it's a question that we need to
start to think about especially the conversation that
we are hoping to have here tonight.
That when we think about our Islam, whether
it's on an individual level or on an
institutional level, we want to move beyond simple
ritual for the sake of ritual, but really
hone in on what it means to live
a life for is the pleasure of Allah.
To think deeply as an individual taking a
look within and not being self deprecating, but
honest and productive in our criticism asking ourselves,
how is our being a Muslim not something
that is just good for us, but how
is our being a Muslim something that is
good for the society around us?
When you think about this narration and you
think about Abu Bakr who lived such a
life that the people who are of his
community would say that we need you here.
If we were not here tomorrow
would the city of Toronto be upset?
If we were not here tomorrow,
would the entire country be in a place
where they would say that, no, they bring
such a benefit
we need for them to be here?
And how do we get to the place
where we find such a value inside of
ourselves
and we appreciate it to such an extent
that we now start to share it with
those who are waiting for us to share
it with them.
What have you done for someone in the
last day of your life?
What have you done for someone in the
last week of your life,
the last month, the last year, if you
were to truly reflect and think about an
action that was purely for the sake of
someone else, not looking to give a rise
to your own nuffs, but to just simply
say that here is an opportunity for me
to do and I will do for no
other reason other than it is the right
thing to do.
I think at times we attribute
too much to passivity and laziness.
And I think where the real challenge is
for many of us
is that we don't necessarily believe we have
something to actually give back.
We don't find a sense of confidence within
and through that confidence,
a see my god given talents and skills
with an air of gratitude and appreciation.
I can say and
doubt we miss something that I can go
and give back to my community.
My confidence also allows for me to see
where I have areas to improve my non
strengths.
When I'm arrogant, I only see weakness in
the world around me.
And when I don't have the ability to
believe that I have something to give back,
I'm not gonna give it back.
The question doesn't have to be on a
big level even though we stand 10,000,
20,000
strong. The first step has to be one
where you take an individual look within,
really hone in on what it is that
you have to offer, and then ask yourself
why you are not giving it
back. Affirming voices, supportive atmosphere
is something that our communities tend to be
devoid of.
We don't necessarily have so many that we
can go and unload on and in turn
the voices and the rhetoric that comes to
us is not rooted in compassion and understanding
and mercy. When the world is trying to
figure out where
is
Do you believe that Allah is
the way he says he is
Do you believe that he is? Do you
believe that he is? Do you believe that
he is Rahim?
And do you take that understanding of your
lord and understand that your perception of him
will be the basis by which you live
your life for him? Do you take that
understanding and then interject it into this world
that is looking to see
where in fact god is?
And through interacting with you, they understand that
not only does Allah exist
but that Allah is merciful, compassionate, and just.
It's hard for us at times.
It's hard for us at times because we
don't always
necessarily have the ability
to find good in ourselves and in turn,
we find hardship in finding good in others.
Certain things are out of our control. We're
not able to really change them.
I was giving a lecture in a community
recently where there was a lot of people,
not as many as this,
and I'm pretty nervous right now.
When I was speaking at the end, a
lot of people came up to me and
they said that was really great and you
inspired us, and my head was getting really
big.
And then there was a young woman who
came up to me and she said that
my sister is a really big fan of
yours. She would love to meet you. Is
that okay?
I was like, yeah. Sure. Bring her on.
When she came,
her sister
couldn't see.
She was blind.
And so I started to talk to her
And when we were finished in our conversation,
she said to me,
I thought you were much taller than you
actually are.
And I said, what do you mean?
This girl can't see.
She said your voice is coming from down
here and not up here.
You're pretty short.
And outside, I was like, yeah,
that's great. And inside, I was thinking, man,
a blind girl just told me I'm short.
How short must that be?
I can't change that.
And I'm comfortable
with who Allah has made me.
He instills with me the courage to not
be afraid
to meet the person that I could potentially
be.
But at times, we find ourselves in a
place where
we don't have necessarily that supportive atmosphere.
And in the absence of that atmosphere, we
start to wonder what does faith mean, what
does Islam mean, and who is Allah if
this is the way that the people who
are meant to be his representatives
on the earth actually treat us.
There was a young woman who came to
see me
who was telling me of
an instance that she had to really digest
in ways that were hard for her digest.
She went to a Muslim school, an Islamic
school growing up.
And she said that when I was born,
I had a facial disfigurement.
I wasn't necessarily the most beautiful person.
And when I went to my school, she
said kids would laugh at me, they would
make fun of me.
And she said there was times when I
would overhear teachers
laughing about the way that I look.
She said in my home, my parents weren't
really so supportive.
They wouldn't really give me any indication that
they were proud of me or they loved
me.
She said, when I got old enough,
I decided to have a surgery done to
deal with my disfigurement.
And my father, he told me, don't do
that because
you will never be beautiful. And if you
do this, god will punish you. He will
not really ever reward you with anything.
She said, I decided to go ahead and
do it anyway.
And after the first phase of the surgery,
they had trouble resuscitating me.
But they were able to.
And she said when they resuscitated me rather
than being met with any warmth or any
kind of remorse that potentially I would not
be here. My father's first words to me
were, see, I told you God would punish
you.
She said, when I went through the 2nd
phase of the surgery and they were able
to fix the disfigurement,
for the first time, I was happy seeing
myself in a mirror.
She said I would smile and I enjoyed
seeing the smile that I saw in the
reflection.
I
And she said, I realized
for the first time
how alone I was.
She said, nobody really came to see me
in that hospital.
None of my friends that I went to
school with. My family definitely didn't come.
And she said the first time I ever
felt support, I ever felt cared for was
when I was in that hospital and those
doctors and nurses and residents were there with
me every step of the way.
And she said, I wanna feel loved like
that again.
I wanted to feel support like that again.
So I went and I picked up a
metal can in my house,
and I started to hit my face with
it.
And she said I hit myself so much
that I went unconscious.
And when I went to the hospital,
she said I felt terrible because the doctor
had told me that I hadn't broken anything
and I was fine to go home.
So now I'm just waiting until I pass
away.
That's not okay.
It's not okay for that young woman to
have to live in a reality like this.
And the responsibility
that we have, whether we were here for
hours, whether we were here for days, whether
we were here for the last week is
to take the information that we have gathered,
not to just store it in our heads,
but to put it in our hearts. Let
it resonate deep within and emanate into action
in a world that is looking for mercy,
hope, and love from the likes of you
and I.
If that young woman walked in here today,
would any of you hesitate in rising for
her?
Then realize she exists
and that there are 1,000 that are like
her that are waiting for you to go
and build the spaces that likes of her
need.
And until you build them, they will not
have a place to go.
Until you put yourself in a place where
you recognize
your skill and your talent and what you
have the ability to do.
And young women such as that who are
trying to figure out where is Allah
and what does he really want from me
are going to just get the responses
from the people who don't really have any
mindfulness of what this dean is about.
You have the ability to do, and you
have to start to think about what that
means.
This world is in a place where surely
it's in a chaos, but what we see
that is distinct from years in the past
is that there are not any more
necessarily people who just seek to fulfill the
needs and desires of their own.
But what we see, there's an absence of
our people who will go and stand in
opposition to them.
What we see is a lacking of people
who are just exerting a sense of selflessness.
And you want to think about how it
is that you see this world and what
it is that motivates you and compels you.
The prophet
he would make dua. That,
oh, Allah, I seek your protection from incapacity
and laziness.
Hajj is not incapacity in the sense that
I don't have the literal ability to do
something, that I can't lift this whole stage.
It is beyond my ability.
Is an incapacity that I have the ability
to do, but for whatever reason, I still
just don't do.
I have the ability to actually be. I
have the ability to perform, but for whatever
reason, I am hesitant. I just don't do.
When you have the ability to go and
do good, you just go do it simply
because that is what is pleasing to Allah.
Not to see what you will gain in
return, but you see where the other will
benefit. This is how Muhammad saw
the world.
In constant movement, he was giving of himself
to others,
never stopping for a breath for anything.
There was no vacation in the 23 years
of revelation.
There was not a time where he said,
hold on. I gotta take time for myself.
Allah has to send revelation down to tell
people that you need to not be in
his house so much
because he is just bringing people in. A
gift of a goat comes to the home
of the prophet
It is a gift. It is not. It
is not charity. He can indulge in it.
But rather than taking of it for himself,
he starts to distribute it to his companions
who are more in need. To understand the
magnitude of this hadith and the remarkable character
of this man,
prophetic
tradition
that
tell us that We have narrations in the
prophetic tradition that tell us that days would
go by without a flame being lit in
the home of Muhammad
He's got nothing to cook on the fire.
We have narrations that would tell us that
the prophet would wrap rocks to his waist
to balance himself out from the sheer weight
loss he had from not eating so much.
And now when a gift of a goat
comes to his home, he has ability to
take from it whatever he wants,
but he gives it away until all of
it is gone except its neck.
In Aisha she comments on this and she
says, none of it is there for us
but its neck.
But
Muhammad does not see what it is that
he has lost but only what others have
gained.
He does not see where it is that
he experiences detriment but where others will benefit.
And when his beloved
says that none of it is there for
us but its neck, he
says, All of it is there for us
but its neck.
What a beautiful way to see the world.
What a beautiful man was Muhammad
And you wanna be able to think for
yourself what is the perspective by which you
view this world.
What is your ability to truly illuminate it
and why are you keeping the blessing
that you can take, your training, your skill
sets, your credential,
and your wealth and putting it into meaningful
strategical
institutions and services
to build the needs of the Muslim community
and fill them in ways that make sense.
We're not driven
by values
because I would argue many of us don't
know what our individual values are.
You know that truth is important to Muhammad
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam.
He was known as the trustworthy one even
before he was known as Nabi.
You know that integrity is important to him.
You know that he demonstrates his values through
his actions.
But if we were to sit down and
have a conversation and I was to ask
you, what are the guiding principles of your
life?
What are the things that you believe in
so much that they dictate every deed and
decision that you interject into this world? What
would you say?
And not the answers that you are supposed
to give, quote, unquote,
not somebody else's answers that you heard on
a stage that was telling you this is
what you're supposed to do, but values that
you reflected upon, you contemplated upon, and you
said that these are the guiding principles of
my life. What are those?
And how do you understand them and do
you truly live by them each and every
breath that you are blessed to breathe into
this world,
you gotta start to think about it.
Because the missing component in this dunya is
you
more importantly than anyone else.
I'm not putting you on a platform
that should be, I'm gonna start doing things
that I don't have the ability to do.
You have to think about what you are
passionate about and you think about what you
are skilled at, and then you start to
share those things.
And if people have put you in a
place where they allow for you to be
satisfied
with doing very little,
do your best, be in pursuit of the
pleasure of the divine.
And if people have let you believe that
you have nothing to offer, they are wrong.
Don't let them dictate your life.
Because the prophet
took the people who his society deemed to
have no value
whatsoever and utilize them to be of the
most transformative
leaders of their time.
Nobody thought he could be anything
good. This was a man who in his
own words, he would tell us that he
drank alcohol prior to his becoming Muslim.
Omer tells us of a time that makes
him laugh and a time that makes him
cry. Most of you probably know this
that he says that I was on a
journey once in the days before he became
Muslim and I had forgotten my traveling idol
at home.
So I took some dates that I had
and I fashioned a makeshift idol from it
and then I started to worship it. And
then later on when I got hungry, I
started to eat from the idol that I
was just worshiping. And when I think about
it, it makes me smile.
Omar says that he also remembers
that that time was a time when people
did not honor the rights of women.
They wanted sons. They didn't want daughters, and
it was customary for people to literally bury
their daughters alive in the ground.
Omar says that I can remember feeling my
own daughter's hand go limp in my hand
that in some narrations that her hand whisked
against the bottom of his beard.
And when he remembers it, he would cry.
Omar, before he became Muslim, he had a
woman who was a servant of his by
the name of.
Omar used to beat this woman so much
when he would stop, he would say, don't
think I have sympathy for you. I'm just
tired. When I get my strength back, I'm
gonna keep going.
That was
the Omar before he became Muslim.
Nobody thought there was anything good in him.
He sees a woman by the name of
Layla
who looks as if she is about to
be going on a journey.
And when Omar inquires where it is that
she is going, Leila says to him that
you have made it very hard for me
to worship my lord here. I have to
go someplace else where I can do so.
And she expects now an onslaught at the
hands of this man,
this man who drank alcohol, this man who
buried his daughter alive, this man who would
beat Muslim women.
And to her astonishment, he says, go and
have peace on your journey.
She goes home and tells her husband, a
man by the name of Amal. And Amal
says to her, what is it that you
were saying?
You sound as if you believe that will
actually become Muslim.
And Leila says, why can't he become Muslim?
And her husband, Amr, says that know this.
The donkey of Omar's father will become Muslim
before he does. Nobody thought there was anything
good about Amr ibn Al Khattab
except the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam.
And when each and every other person was
looking for a reason to push down, Muhammad
was looking to see where there was goodness.
And he uniquely was making dua.
That, oh, Allah, brings some to Islam, brings
some strength to Islam, and is different from.
It is not physical strength. It is
it is strength rooted in dignity and respect.
Give us some of that strength by the
one of the 2 men who is more
beloved to you.
We know how the jaw is accepted,
and we know how the situation changes drastically.
The goes and he knocks on the door
and the companions, they all run to different
places.
Who becomes Muslim just a short time before
says to the prophet
let me open the door.
When the prophet goes to Omar and says,
is it now not the time?
And Omar becomes Muslim. The situation
changes drastically.
For the first time, they are walking through
the streets in public.
Nobody can challenge this man.
Under his leadership, the community grows manyfold when
he is a Khalifa.
The prophet
says of him
that if there was a prophet after me,
it would be this man, Omar.
What if Omar
believed the people who said he couldn't be
better?
What if he believed every voice that put
him into this box that said, there is
no hope for you to change?
If people are doing that to you,
you gotta put their voices aside. You gotta
really build a connection
with your Lord, your creator,
and you find strength and motivation
to go and light up this world with
the brilliance of you
because that's what we need.
And if you are the person
who is pushing away the,
if your voice is filled with that rigidness,
that harshness, that inability to connect to where
the person is actually coming from,
you are uncompromising.
You don't know where to really see and
reflect where the person is coming in every
day they live prior to that moment that
you are engaging them, you can't see them
bigger than the worst of their actions,
then you need to get out the way
because you don't want to push any more
hearts aside.
You don't want to remove from us not
just because we're in a place where we
need that talent, we need that leadership, we
need that strength.
But, ultimately,
you wanna think for yourself.
How will you stand in front of Allah
if you were the reason that you pushed
anybody away?
Because you couldn't think of them bigger than
what you had constructed them to be through
your own preconceived ideas and notions.
That your interaction with them was only to
elevate yourself by denigrating them and everything that
they were trying to offer.
This is a critical time.
I live in New York City, in Manhattan.
I wear many different hats so to speak.
3 days ago, I stood at a funeral
for 2 police officers who were shot with
30,000 people.
About a week prior to that,
there was a rally that took place with
tens of 1,000
trying to have their voices heard because of
social inequities and institutionalized
racisms.
And the organizers of that protest
reached out to me saying, can we meet
in your center before we get things started?
And if you took a look out of
our Islamic Center's prayer room into Washington Square
Park, it was filled with people who wanted
to have that right reinstored.
But there is tension,
and what is missing is you and I
understanding
our role.
When I look at pictures of people who
are active in that movement, most of the
photographs that are taking place of the activists
in New York City include 1 young woman
that I would ask you to make jaw
for. Her name is Linda Sarsour. She is
a Muslim Palestinian
activist from Brooklyn. She is in every picture.
She is at the front of every gathering.
She is at every meeting,
but the rest of us need to be
there as well.
We need to be able to reflect and
understand what does it mean to us.
What does it mean to us to be
part of a movement that is trying to
get this world to understand that black lives
matter?
What does it mean for us to be
part of a reality
that allows for us to take the best
of our talents and skills to be there
for people who may or may not be
from the same walk of life as us.
Their skin color might not be the same
as ours, but we truly remind ourselves who
sunnah it is that we follow. And without
condition and qualification,
the prophet was there for everybody,
and there's a lot of things that need
to change.
I was speaking to a community
and I told them that these were things
that were happening and that that meeting took
place in our center.
And one of the people there said, that's
remarkable.
You all do things like that?
I said, yeah. Why would we not?
He's like, I wish we did things like
that.
He said, why do you think Muslims don't
do those things?
That's the question we have to ask not
rhetorically.
When I was in that community,
I would tell you what the realities were
that were being faced.
Where I went to a masjid, it had
a beautiful basketball court. And this guy who
said to me that I wish we were
part of movements that stood for those who
we have the ability to stand for without
qualification.
African American boys who came to play basketball,
and someone in the Masjid felt that there
was too many black kids playing on that
court. They went to them and said, if
some of you don't leave, we're gonna call
the police to tell them to have you
leave.
That's the reality in our community that we
have to deal with.
I sat down with a young man who
was active in bringing
awareness of Islam to Spanish speaking communities.
And he said, when I went to the
local masjids that were built with 1,000,000 of
dollars saying that we should launch a program
to bring more people in Spanish speaking sermons
and lectures in.
The man said to me, well, hold on.
We wanna think about this because if too
many Hispanic people become Muslim, then we're gonna
have to start giving them our zakah.
Where are we
at?
How do we understand
what it really means to practice this faith?
Think about how your being a Muslim is
something that does not just bring benefit to
you,
but think about how your being a Muslim
is something that brings benefit to the people
who are around you.
You have it.
You have it.
And if there are voices that make you
think otherwise,
push them aside. Talk to the people who
make sense,
people who understand you. If you are not
doing well inside, you are hurting inside, don't
carry that inside of your heart. There is
no shame in talking out with people the
realities of your life experiences.
There is no problem in opening up and
letting somebody know that this is something that
has happened to me. This is a place
where I have some kind of anxiety. This
is a place where I have an issue.
This is what the prophet
was for his companions.
That they could come and they could talk
to him knowing that he would get where
they were coming from.
That he was able to walk with them
through their challenges. He was able to walk
with them through their mistakes. He was able
to walk with them through their sins. The
companions were not a good generation simply because
they were perfect, but they were good and
strong because when they fell, they knew how
to get back on their feet and they
knew how to help each other up.
That's what you and I should be doing
for one another.
And if nobody has helped you up,
understand
that whether this whole world is with you
or you feel as if you are most
alone,
Allah is closer to you than your own
jugular vein.
And that does not have to be a
sentiment that casts doubt or fear that paralyzes
you,
but you understand that he is always watching
over you, that he is there with you
even when you feel as if no one
else is there with you.
When you build that relationship with him and
you spark your inside in such a way
that you truly allow for yourself with that
certainty
to go out there and bring that presence
to this world that is thirsting for it,
you're gonna start to see certain changes.
You're gonna start to see things will be
different.
You don't have to be the person who
stands on the member
to work at a soup kitchen.
You don't have to be the person who
leads the halaqa or does the or has
memorized the entire Quran to be the person
who donates or the person who tutors
or the person who provides counseling or helps
to build the counseling center.
You and I, we're gonna be the ones
to build these services
and build them in ways that make sense.
It starts by taking a look within
and understanding
that each heart is important
simply because it's a heart that's attached to
a soul that exists in a living body,
whether that's a body of a Muslim or
not.
You start to be that change for us,
and you don't undermine
your ability to impact even one.
There's a man that was known as a
author of his time that would go out
to be in nature to gain inspiration for
his writings.
And one day, he goes to a beach
to gain that inspiration. And as he is
walking down the shore, he sees a figure
in the distance that intrigues him.
It looks as if it is dancing.
And when he gets closer, he sees that
it's not dancing, but it seemingly is picking
something up off the ground and throwing it
into the water.
And when he gets even closer, he sees
that it is a young boy and washed
upon that shore, thousands and thousands of starfish,
and the boy is throwing them into the
sea.
So when he gets close enough to the
boy, he says to him, what is it
that you are doing?
The boy looks at him and says, I'm
throwing the fish back into the sea.
And the author says, why are you doing
this?
The young boy says that they have washed
up onto the shore and if I don't,
they're going to lose all of their water
and they will surely die.
The author, he looks up and down the
shoreline,
and all he sees is fish upon fish.
He says to the boy that there are
so many of them.
There is no way you will be able
to get them all back into that water.
What is the point of what you are
doing?
What difference will it really make?
The young boy, he looks at the author.
He looks down at the ground.
He picks up 1 of the fish,
throws it into the sea.
He says it made a difference to that
one.
If you can impact
even one heart,
don't let it go.
If you have the ability
to be the one that interject some benefit
into this world,
do so in pursuit of the pleasure of
your lord.
And if I can ever be helpful to
you in any way,
please don't hesitate in reaching out.
Our
geographical
physical distance should not be a reason as
to why we are separate from each other
because we feel the pain when fools in
the names of our faith bring whatever burdens
they do to the way people understand this
deed.
But if we can feel pain from people
miles away, so too we should be able
to heal one another even if we are
miles away from each other.
And if we are only meant to be
in this place at this time together,
then I pray that
Allah
gathers us all together again with our loved
ones in the best of places in the
world beyond this one.
May Allah
guide us and protect us. May he bless
us with knowledge that benefits us. May he
bless us with the
to understand and implement that knowledge into our
daily lives, and may he guide and bless
us all.