Mirza Yawar Baig – Living in Muslims only enclaves
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Muhammad or Ali. He was Abu Asmaa, kasiman, kathiram kasih, my
brothers and
sisters, I'm back in my one
of my favorite places, mitterniki Park
it's been rainy yesterday, very heavily the whole day. So today
it's all wet, but it's there's no rain, so in that sense, it is dry,
and the park is obviously absolutely green, as you can see,
lots of tall trees, very thick vegetation, undergrowth.
This park has bears,
and the Rangers said to me, Well, nobody's been eaten yet,
so I hope I'm not the one who breaks that good bear record
by being eaten. But otherwise, this is a
beautiful park. I had done one hathara down that track, which you
see, but I'm not going down that today because it's too wet and the
footing is not so great. And also there are obviously, as you can
imagine this, lots of flying insects, lot of mosquitoes.
There's no malaria here, so it means that no anaphylase
mosquitoes, but
the others bite just as badly. So it's best to stay clear that on
these wider parts,
you're not that prone to
insects.
The point
I want to discuss with you now is this,
this idea that somebody proposed answer, nice, wonderful idea.
I'm all in favor of it, so let me first say it
clearly,
which is to have a an exclusive Islamic community,
houses,
small masjids in the mahalas, And then a big Jamia.
Then, of course, Islamic schools,
also businesses that
will be done in that place,
businesses for which
industry loans will be given,
maybe equity participation or something, and so on and so forth.
So all of that, the idea being that we have this beautiful
Islamic
enclave, beautiful Islamic city,
town
which is populated exclusively by Muslims
living their Islamic way.
So sounds very nice.
Now, question is,
every initiative of the human has two aspects to it,
a positive and a potentially negative one.
So the positive aspect to this initiative, I think, is very clear
handle. And
if someone comes up with this for you and you want to know if you
should participate, I would say yes, please do that.
However, keep in mind
some caveats,
some
beware signs.
The first of them is ask yourself, what is the purpose of my
existence in this world? Why do I exist? Why did Allah subhanho Tala
send me here
to do what
it's not guesswork. We don't have to guess that. Allah told us why
he sent us
gun to khayram Lin NAS. Allah said, in sola Imran, you are the
best of people, and you have been sent for the people. Allah did not
say Muslim. Mean, he didn't say you mean set for the Muslims,
tammu, Nabil, marufi, watanhau, Nadal, Moon, kariwa, tumin, Abu la
you've been sent to enjoin good and forbid evil, and you have
faith in Allah. Subhanaw Taal,
so to put it another way, you have been sent to show people
an example a way of life which is superior to whatever they are used
to.
You've been sent people. You've been sent to show people a way of
life, to show people standards of living, to show people akhlaq, to
show people manners.
Etiquette culture,
which is better than whatever they have been doing,
and which is beneficial for them, and you are supposed to to
be there for the benefit of the people. And Allah said, Not say
Muslim. Mean It saved for the benefit of the Muslims. Muslims
Muslims also come into it, because Muslims are also people, but
the purpose is to benefit all of humanity.
Now, Mr. RAM said the best of you is the one who is the most
beneficial to the people, to humanity,
and all the ahadis we have concerning neighbors,
which very clearly, the mahadisoon have said that
those ahadis, except the ones where specifically a Moon's Muslim
is mentioned, they apply To everyone,
whoever, irrespective of caste, creed, culture, ethnicity, color,
race,
a neighbor is a neighbor and is entitled to the same rights that
he or she is treated. You know, I won't go into the whole list of
neighbors, but there are enormous number of rights and all
neighbors, no matter who they are supposed to benefit from this fact
that they are. They have all these rights. So the point I'm making
here is that
this is the reason we exist now, when that is the case and we know
that this is the case, I How does living in an exclusive enclave
serve that purpose? Because if I'm living in an exclusive enclave,
then I am exposed only to my people, and that is the stated
objective. Because we say, for example, oh, you know, our
children are getting spoiled because they are being exposed to
this toxic environment. And really, in many cases, the
environment is toxic.
I'm not denying that. And so our children are exposed to that. And
you know where they are.
They get spoiled. Their morals are spoiled, and ethics and values and
whatnot. And so therefore we must
keep ourselves separate, protect ourselves, live in these enclaves,
Muslim only enclaves.
But then the question is, then, how is our purpose of existence?
The purpose that ALLAH SubhanA sent us. How is this to be
fulfilled? What must we do with that purpose? Because Allah didn't
change that purpose. Allah didn't say that.
You know, this purpose is no longer valid. It was valid in the
time of rasa. Salah. Oh, if anything, this purpose is valid
and necessary even more today, given the kind of society we have,
if you're looking at amaril baruf and he and munkar, looking at and
joining good and forbidding evil,
and joining good and forbidding evil becomes even more important
where evil abounds, not where virtue abounds. Because if you
were living and if I was living in the medina of Salam, we
would have to search for somebody who was committing a sin,
looking for them, right, put up, brought an investigation. Finally,
one person is committing a sin, but
today, I mean, it's almost the opposite. So enjoying good and
forgetting evil today is an even bigger and more onerous
responsibility
that we need to be clear about, especially when we are living in
countries like this, like the United States, Australia, New
Zealand,
UK, you know, all the white men countries,
where my experience at least, of America and Americans is that
people are curious, people are
respectful of Islam, of the Islamic culture of the Islamic
religion. People are very open.
They want to learn. People come to me and ask, just to give you an
idea, I am the
Muslim chaplain in Springfield College and Westfield State
University.
Those who know me know how I dress and
in this dress, I don't change this dress for anybody. I don't change
this dress because I'm in,
you know, at within courts at my workplace, which is the college, I
still dress the same way.
I still, you know.
To walk and talk
and look the same.
And for those of you who don't know me, the way I dress is that i
i wear soaps. I wear long
soaps I wear
my head is always covered
in a cap, or
many times in a turban,
depending on the weather, I might have a mishlaa,
which is an which is an over
coat over the
soap. And
not only has no one ever objected to that, not only has no one ever
said, Well, you know, why are you wearing this stuff
or discriminated against me anyway? But this is welcomed.
This is welcome. People are happy to see me dressed the way I'm
dressed. Now, the evidence of that I'm not imagining all this. The
evidence of this is that
I was invited a couple of years ago to deliver the invocation at
the commencement of Springfield College and Springfield College.
Springfield College is a over 130 year old college, and Springfield
very highly respected
for those of you who are interested in basketball.
Basketball was invented in Springfield College,
so I was invited to do the invocation, and
that video is
on the internet, and I'll ask Umar to put a link to that
in this hotel.
So I went, and you can see what I was looking at how I was dressed.
You can see what I said.
So there I was, the full nine yards, looking, walking, talking
like a Muslim, Alhamdulillah.
And believe me, the sword did come in our mind. Should I wear a suit?
Alhamdulillah, I have plenty of suits, plenty of very good suits.
So I said, Should I wear a suit instead of this? Maybe just have a
cap on the head or something? I said, No, I'm a Muslim, and
I'm confident about myself. I'm confident about my culture, I'm
confident about my religion. I'm not arrogant. And so I will wear
what makes me look like a Muslim, I did that.
But the thought was in my mind that
maybe this is the first and last time that I'm going to be invited
for this invocation, and next year they will not invite me. But
believe me, every year
I get invited, and not because I'm the only chaplain. They have other
chaplains. They have chaplains for other religions, but I get invited
to do the indication at this commencement of speaking College.
Now my point is
that in a country like this, with people like this who are so open,
who are respectful, who want to listen to you, who are interested
in that they give you the offer, they give you the opportunities,
right?
If you say no, I don't talk to anybody.
I will live in my enclave. I will speak only Arabic or Urdu or
whatever. And I will, you know, decide Quran all day or do
whatever I do, I
will not talk to this kufr,
they are all for the Hellfire
SubhanAllah. Please have mercy on yourself.
There will come a time when we and they
will stand before Allah subhanahu wa,
and when they are
taken, or about to be taken
to Jahannam,
they will say, Oh, Our up.
We have a question,
and our question is
that you sent these people who are about to go to to Jannah
among us.
We opened the doors of our countries and of our societies to
these people.
We gave them rights and privileges that they did not even have in
their own countries.
How many of us work in the Middle East,
in the Arab countries
for decades,
for generations, and how many of us have been.
A given citizenship.
What about America? What about Canada? What about Australia?
America takes a bit longer,
but Canada and Australia, three years
and you get a Canadian, Australian passport,
right? So they will say, See Yara, we opened the doors. We gave them
citizenship. We opened the doors of our educational institutions,
which enabled them and their children to get world class
education,
in many case, free,
because if that in any of the welfare states, children are born
there. They are entitled to free education. We gave them
the best health care possible in the world,
and in many case, free. Those of people on living in countries with
NHS and so on, free
in America if you have insurance,
free and those of us who complain, and complaining is our mashallah
birthright. Marshall Hamilton,
we complain about everything, and if there's nothing to complain
about, then we complain about the fact that there's nothing to
complain about. So we complain. Oh, insurance is so expensive.
Well, get into a situation where you need hospitalization for major
surgery or something like that, or in an accident,
and then walk out of there without a single cent having to be paid
because you were paying health insurance, and you know exactly
how expensive that was that right? So they will say that we did all
this for them. We gave them health insurance. We gave them health top
most, world class health care, stoppers, world class education.
We opened the doors. We did not stop them from settling in our
communities. We did not say Muslim must not come here. No, you're
free to buy a house, you're free to live, rent apartment, water.
Sure they
in many countries, they complain if we want to open a masjid, and
we know why they complain, right? I those of you are interested, I
can elaborate, but I'm sure nobody needs that elaboration. We know
how Muslims behave when they have masjid, how they park their cars,
the noise levels, the
insane ways of driving, and we think that if I say Laila, then I
don't have to follow any other law, and I don't follow right
either, but that doesn't matter.
So,
you know,
they oppose for those reasons, but still,
almost invariably,
I have heard of many cases of
massages, projects getting delayed,
having to go to court and so on because of opposition. But I have
never heard
of a mazis project having to be canceled because of the opposition
of local people. I'm not saying there's never a project. Never.
That never happens. Maybe it does, but that's not the common thing.
The common thing is that it goes through,
sure people moan and groan, but they but it goes to and we know,
we know exactly why they mourn and they groan.
So they will say that Yara, we gave them all of this, but they
did not introduce us to you.
They did not introduce us to you.
Now, what is the answer to that?
I'm not going to I'm not going to go and say that Allah will do
this, or that. I don't know, Allah will do whatever Allah wants to
do, but I'm asking this question that these people, when they make
that complaint,
and they
say this to ALLAH SubhanA
does not sound justified to you.
They will say, well, they took from us, but they never gave
anything to us in return. They did not even introduce you. They
secluded themselves in prayers and inside the massages, and they
wouldn't speak our language, and we couldn't communicate with them,
and they wouldn't sit and eat with us, and they wouldn't visit us,
and they wouldn't invite us to visit them, and and so on and so
on. And you know now you want to throw us in Jahannam because we
didn't worship you. Well, we didn't worship you because we
didn't know you, and we didn't know you because the people who
sent to introduce you to US did not do their job. My
brothers and sisters, fear the day
when this will happen.
Let us fear the day when this will happen. I want to close with this
some.
Already came to one on Ali, the
founder of the Taliban movement,
and they said to him, you know,
this was some alim. So he said to him, you know, I am not against
your movement, but see the kind of people that come here, you've got
all kinds of
people who are involved in all kinds of
dirty stuff, right? Somebody is a drunkard, and somebody is doing
all kinds. I mean, I don't want to go into this, but people doing all
sorts of stuff like that and so on, filthy energy.
Why do you
allow them here? Allah gives the
the Ulama, the wisdom,
he said, in Urdu,
he said, Get Dhobi ke pass to ganda kaprajata,
ganda kapada.
He said, The washaman. He only gets dirty clothes, right?
So what
kind of clothes do you put into your washing machine?
Clean clothes,
dirty clothes. So if the washing machine says, Well, I'm not going
to wash dirty clothes, then you will say, Well,
this washing machine
is worthless
because it's not doing what it's supposed to do. If the soap, the
bar of soap, says, I will stay within my cow, within my envelope,
and I will not touch a dirty piece of cloth,
then that soap is useless. It's not a soap.
It's going to sit there
and do nothing.
Allah sent us to clean society. Allah did not send us to sit like
a bar of soap in a
in its cover.
Allah sent us to clean society.
Allah sent us to
be in this world
as people who came to correct it, to to change it for the better, to
teach people how to live a life of
grace and a life of purpose and a life of
benefit to everyone, hello. Sent us for that.
If you're not going to do that work,
and if you are going to complain and say, no, no, I can't live with
these people. They are too dirty. They are too immoral and
promiscuous and whatnot. Well, how is this immorality going to go
away
if they don't even have a role model of a moral person among
them,
my brother and sister, I seriously want you to think about this and
say
that all these things about living in exclusive enclaves and so on
nice, but looking at it from the perspective of the deen and the
purpose of our existence. The reason why Allah subhana sent us
into this world is that purpose being served. Because on the Day
of Judgment, when we meet Allah subhana, Tara, we will be
questioned about that purpose. We
will not be questioned about our prejudices and our
you know, why did you have this prejudice or not? The question was
about, this is the reason you were sent.
You were sent to illuminate,
and you refused to turn yourself on,
and you allowed the world to remain in darkness. And you sat by
the wayside and you found the blind man stumbling and falling
into ditches and so on. And you laughed at him.
You said, Look at this. How blind these people are. He can't even
see a dish in front of him. Of course, he can't because he's
blind. How's he going to see the dish?
And you the one who Allah gave eyes to. You
want to sit there and laugh at him. You want to watch the fun
instead of helping him ask Allah to enable us to do that which is
pleasing to Him and to save us from ourselves.