Mohammad Elshinawy – Dismantling the Isms – ICNA Convention 2022

			Sound egg everybody
		

			we begin the name of Allah whole Praise and Glory be to Allah and maize finest peace and blessings
be upon His messenger Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, and his family and his companions and
all those who tried his path may Allah azza wa jal grant us and you a life upon his path and a death
while adhering to his guidance, and a reunion around him and drink from his blessed hand sallallahu
alayhi wa sallam on the Day of Judgment, the day of thirst, Allahumma, Amin, and an opportunity to
see the face of his lower than ours Allahumma. Amin
		

			does like love hate for me for making it clear that I'm going to be speaking about dismantling the
isms. I have no intention whatsoever of dismantling the isms.
		

			Because how in the world do I do that in 20 minutes or in 20 days? Right? And how do I do that? When
there's still more isms to come? Right?
		

			And how do I do that, when many of the proponents of these isms
		

			make some very valid points, and they offer some very valid critiques and sometimes some very valid
solutions to the very valid grievances that they speak in the name of or attempt to remedy.
		

			And that's really the secret of the talk. You see, Muslims face two major challenges in light of
these prevailing ideas whenever and wherever they are these prevailing ideologies, the isms.
		

			One challenge is to not get sucked into accepting it all wholesale, right, the bandwagon effect, you
know, hook, line and sinker, they call it without any sort of discernment without any sort of
discretion.
		

			The other challenge is to not get sucked into or bounced into the pendulum effect, you know, the
pendulum on the grandfather clock, where you categorically reject everything that is associated with
that ism.
		

			Like think of liberalism, for example, right part of the the dominant paradigm, the lens through
which people see the world today. Liberalism is pushed and understood to be necessary liberalism,
just openness. If we want to simplify terms, as the world is becoming more and more diverse, and
exposed to its diversity, and societies are becoming more and more pluralistic, right.
		

			Openness is sort of happening naturally, organically, it's expected you need to just be more open to
more difference. But what happens when you just accept that as a superficial principle, unregulated
openness, unregulated open mindedness? Are we to be open minded, even to close mindedness? You see
the issue here?
		

			Like racism is an easy example. Should we be open to the idea that to your beliefs are yours and to
my beliefs are mine we want to just accept it all and be inclusive of it all? Even if someone has
this superiority complex that I'm inherently better because my skin color is XY and Z? No, I would
not be open to the right.
		

			Or openness to the idea of for example, racism was the easy one. Here's a sticky one gender non
conformism we shouldn't define what is a man what is a woman?
		

			super tricky.
		

			Because you're open to the fact initially, that yeah, a man is a woman is no less, you know, human
than a man, there's no difference between a woman and a man. And then you jump further and say we
should be open to the fact that a woman and a man could mean anything to anyone, then what is the,
the issue here? If we don't have definitions, then nothing will mean everything will mean nothing.
So openness to things that are incoherent becomes a problem. At the same time, on the opposite end,
in flexibility, right? When you just become rigid, and reject openness altogether, like one of the
trademarks of Islam, one of the hallmarks of Islam is its sense of freedom, right? Its sense of
		

			tolerance, a degree of tolerance. And this is something so beautiful about our deen that was
actually exported to the rest of the world by the Islamic culture, the Islamic influence, you know,
		

			secularism right, sectioning off religion to one hour on Sunday or one hour on Friday and making
sure it doesn't appear in public life appear in public discourse. That was sort of seen as a
necessary solution. Because if you say this is true, and I say that is true, we're gonna kill each
other.
		

			It's gonna get real toxic, real
		

			fast.
		

			But in our tradition, we actually had something very different. We were not blind to the
differences, we in very differences. Islam makes some very unequivocal assertions, it's very
assertive that this is true. Allah is One, Muhammad is his prophet, the Quran is from him. And at
the same time, it gives people a degree of freedom, because why else would they be accountable if
they didn't have a choice to accept or reject the truth that I'm asserting is true. That's part of
the hallmark of Islam, the tolerance and freedom that the other nations of the world even 1000 years
after, couldn't work to. And so they said, Let's just section off religion, let's not assert
		

			anything anywhere, let us be secular, that was seen as their only possible out to the end
flexibility, sometimes as Muslims as well, we sort of fall into that we ricochet right from the ISM
and start defining Islam as the very opposite of the Islam when the Islam could have had some truth
in it. Does that make sense?
		

			So
		

			resisting the bandwagon effect, that's the first duty, right? Because if we don't resist it, what we
are unintentionally implying is that Islam is basically like some homeless orphan
		

			that is shivering outside in the cold, awaiting 1000 or 1500 years, right. For some movement, to
adopt it and take it in and define it for us. Right. Islam was defined 1400 years ago, wasn't it?
		

			That is the danger. Islam is not defined, adopted. It's not an orphan. It didn't wait for 1000 years
for some man made movement that could be responding from a good place to an injustice in some era or
period of history or not. That's not Islam.
		

			Islam was perfected on the day that Allah subhanho wa Taala revealed it to us. It's not a reaction
or an overreaction. It's not some superficial solution to sometimes very real
		

			considerations, very real circumstance, very real injustices. And then on the opposite end, if you
don't resist the pendulum effect, of swinging to the opposite of all isms to define your Islam, then
you haven't escaped the isms either. Because the Islam is still what defined your Islam, right?
You're still a captive of it. I am the opposite of the Islam. So what have you really done there?
Yes, Islam does not have any of the cons, the downsides of these prevailing manmade ideologies. But
at the same time, Islam does also have
		

			all of the prose all of the benefits that human beings might have just arrived that out of their
nature, their love, for justice, their love for goodness, their love for equality, that Allah put
inside us, a product of human intellect, a product of human goodness. We don't believe humans are
inherently evil in Islam, we believe they're inherently good, susceptible to evil, short sighted and
susceptible to evil. And so they could have arrived at some very good solutions. Incomplete, but
solutions. That's why the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, I was sent to perfect good
character, because a part of it could be inborn. Right? And that's why Allah azza wa jal said, The
		

			word of your Lord Tim met Kelly matura, because adalah the word of your Lord has been completed has
been perfected in truth, and injustice, meaning there's justice out there, there's truth out there,
but only Allah's Dean is perfectly true and perfectly just completely true and completely just so
that was the first leg of our journey together.
		

			The second is now what do we do these isms are here and people react in these, you know, very
dangerous ways the bandwagon effect the pendulum effect.
		

			I want to show you what I think is a success story, you know, by the Arizona and I noticed the the
famous Turkish reformer.
		

			From this past century, he lived at the heart of
		

			the the dismantling the destruction of the Khilafah. Right. The Islamic State, the Khalifa was
cancelled in his lifetime, and the colonial project and its conspiracies and its invasions and all
this stuff. We're in full swing, right? And everyone is so consumed with this issue of how do we
react to this new world that has us down for the count because he was in Turkey, Turkey, meaning he
was at the heart of the anti religious sentiment, right?
		

			And he said something that I wish you will remember it's a very Quranic principle. And it's no
coincidence that he has his own 5000 Page commentary on the Quran.
		

			Rasa and you know the messages of light which I have a very superficial familiarity with, but the
connection is all
		

			obvious, he says, and remember this if you remember nothing else from the talk and no ILA Bina Ilma
Adewumi. A Hua Zhu Min Illa headsman mo jute
		

			we are far more in need of building what's absent than dismantling what's present.
		

			We are far more in need as an OMA
		

			for building what's absent over dismantling what's present.
		

			And as for this being super Quranic Think about how many times the Quran has the pattern, promoting
the good forbidding the evil promoting the good forbidding the evil. It always began with promoting
the good because yes, you need both, but you need to prioritize promoting the good over preventing
forbidding pushing back on dismantling the evils.
		

			Elsewhere in the Quran when the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam was entering Mecca on the day of
opening Mecca liberating Mecca towards the end of his life, but not quite right. he recites the IOA
puja al hardcores that have been belted in Albertville again as a hookah and say oh Muhammad
sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, the truth has now arrived, and falsehood has perished. falsehood is
bound to perish. Think about that. What do you mean falsehood is bound to perish? It's been 20
years, why didn't it leave 20 years ago, that I came down or out 20 years into the ministry into the
prophethood of Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. And what do you mean the truth has arrived?
		

			Islam was the Quran was being revealed for 20 years. And the Quran had not fully been revealed. Yet
the last few years of the prophets life, a lot of Quran came down. So what does it mean? What's the
secret here? Say the truth has now arrived in equal strength. falsehood is flimsy falsehood is bound
to perish. But because truth is absent in equal force, there's not a level playing field on the
ground on Earth. That's why falsehood sticks around. You need to build out your truth, build out
your good in order for falsehood which is bound to perish perish to finally perish. That is the
idea.
		

			You know, in sports, they say the best defense is a good one. Good offense, right. And in medicine,
even in ancient times, they say prevention is better than a cure. This is just understood by
everybody. And even like in management, they say that Firefighting is bad management, you just keep
reacting to problems trying to dismantle and undo and put out fires. It's not sustainable, it just
won't work.
		

			And then you look at the Quran again, the Quran does something profound in building the hearts and
the societies of believers. The Quranic narrative, focuses more on the praise worthiness and the
perfection of Allah, way more than it does.
		

			Establish that Allah is glorified above imperfection. If you try as the scholars did to look at how
the Quran speaks about Allah, it tells you so much more about who Allah is, than who Allah isn't.
And when it speaks about people that are confused about Allah or have ascribed, you know, some
divine qualities to an idol, or some entity or Bing or idea or otherwise, the Quran says What a
smell and send me to Musa these gods that you called Gods. No one's buying that, right. But no one's
buying that then why wouldn't everyone just believe in Allah? No, until you know and your heart is
nourished and you are acquainted and experience the greatness of Allah, then and only then will your
		

			spirits be liberated by it. So that's why the Quran and even the Sunnah of the Prophet alayhi salatu
wa sallam said that Alhamdulillah is superior to Subhan Allah, even though you say both, they go
hand in hand. The difference is that hamdulillah establishes what Allah is perfect, glorified, is
Allah means what Subhan Allah means Allah is not imperfect. Right? So establishing his greatness is
the best way to go. Otherwise, you could be validating false gods without realizing it. You could be
validating if you speak about it too much the imperfection of the true God.
		

			You know, like if I if I went to a king of this world, and I want to praise him, and I praise him by
negating bad qualities, instead of saying, Your Highness, you're so amazing, and you're so generous,
and you're so kind and please let me live. Right? If I say, you're not a trash man, and you're not a
loser, right, and you're not a tyrant, and you're, what's gonna happen,
		

			he's gonna give me the extended tour of the dungeon downstairs. That's what's gonna happen. Because
negating the opposite too much sort of adds credence validates the opposite. Like if it weren't
imaginable, you wouldn't have spent so much time on it.
		

			You're throwing shade here, right? It's almost like
		

			when the parent says, who ate the chocolate in the cupboard? And one of the kids says, I didn't do
it.
		

			That's mighty suspicious. Right? You know, even Omar Radi Allahu Anhu. He wants charged a young poet
with slender and had him punished, because he said in his poetry, and my two parents are not
fornicators you know, because poets sometimes if you're battling, right and rap, or whatever it is,
right? You just got to quickly think of the next line not to calculate to keep the rhyme up, and so
on and so forth. Right. And so they say things that are sometimes
		

			problematic. And so he said, I didn't say the fornicator I said they are not fornicators he said,
You made it the conversation. Right? The fact that you say my parents are not you dismantle the
suspicion when no one ever suspected them? You sort of added a layer of it's possible that they
might have you made it a conversation
		

			you know, am I add to your few layers to this evening, okay. And when he speaks about an Islam we
should speak about more materialism. Shopaholic ism, right? He says people that love Allah and are
devoted to Allah, but they don't have sacred knowledge. They're not close enough to the Quran. They
make a huge mistake, when they try to get other people to hate the material world hate dunya stay
away from dunya and dunya. This and then you're that right? He said, But the person who knows Allah,
what they do is they don't dismantle the love of dunya. Materialism.
		

			Even though dunya is wider than the material world, that is the ego and everything else, right? Your
worldly reputation. And otherwise, he says, but let's just simplify as materialism. They don't try
to dismantle materialism. He said, what they do instead is that they cultivate the love of God.
Because it makes it easier for someone to temper their love for this world when their love for Allah
becomes superior to their love for this world, as opposed to trying to get them to hate the world
that is their world, my oxygen mytrees minus theologia. My parents my home, right?
		

			And so this rule of building what's absent, more so than dismantling was present. You find it
everywhere. Even when people have doubts about Islam, by the way, skepticism.
		

			You will never have the answers to every single doubt. So it's a bad strategy, try to get an answer
to every single doubt, become some doubts or not doubt some questions or non questions, right?
		

			Just the question itself is wrong. Is God so powerful that he can create a circle with four corners?
Oh, my God. It's true. No, it's not true. And it doesn't deserve an answer. Because we define
objects you tell me you want to square a circle. And so imagine a person gets riddled with doubt,
and sits there for 10 years stuck on this question. What? And so trying to answer every doubt, your
life is not long enough, and your brain is to finite, some answers only the scholars know. And some
answers only Allah knows. So what is the better protocol to build the faith, strengthen the ABS
strengthen the faith that could be absent, its strength could be absent? Do you think I have the
		

			answer to every doubt that comes my way? I just undid the circle square thing. You think I have the
answer to every single one? No, I don't. But the difference between me 20 years ago, and me now is
that I can go to sleep at night. Now knowing why Islam is true for very good reasons, even without
the answer. Like you know, what I'm sure is a really good explanation about Hadith that I never
heard of before. But I'm fine. Right? That is the idea. May Allah keep us all on first from faith
say I mean?
		

			And likewise in Dawa, you know, one of our teachers used to say, that, if you your Dawa is to pick
at and critique other people's systems, belief systems, moral systems, he says, When you attack
something, people get defensive and protective of it. Even if they originally believed it was
worthless. Like if I had some sand in my hand, he told us and you attack the sand in my hand,
		

			I'm gonna go
		

			and get protective, this, Oh, this must be important. Right? Maybe the stock value on sand went up
or something. But if instead of attacking and trying to dismantle my attachment to sand, you present
your diamonds, I'm probably going to go like this and open my hand, right or wrong. So inviting to
the truth is far more effective than you trying to respond to deconstruct these untruths.
		

			And so, in terms of political justice, and political systems, and otherwise world paradigms, world
systems out there, we can't just critique the dominant narrative. It's extremely important
		

			Do we have to build a superior alternative a counter narrative, a counter culture, once our
communities for example, and then in sha Allah Our Ummah, but it also starts before community with
family and before that with individual, once we build the representation of
		

			beauty in us, we start representing beauty. We start representing justice, we start representing
compassion, we start being recognized
		

			for our concern for the world for our progress and contributions to the world.
		

			people gravitate towards strength, like look at athletes, do you think we would take great pride or
even know the quotes of Muhammad Ali Rahim? Allah or Habib? If he was one in 28? Instead of 29? No,
right? We wouldn't know and we wouldn't care. Even politicians, many times people speak about these
politicians, you know, and like sometimes like, they think they represent the Muslim community. And
we can't let our children believe this because there's some like maneuvering that they're doing that
our kids don't understand that it's mixed messaging and say, Listen, they're gravitating towards
strength. And your children probably know that there's certain things ABCs Islam here that arrived,
		

			but you can't stop them. People need heroes. So build the hero, and stop complaining that the anti
hero is taking someone or someone who shouldn't be a hero. It is our problem, to build that
representation cognitively in the minds, right, but also concretely on the ground of strength and
beauty and justice and compassion and the values of our deen. The last example I'll give you because
I'm out of time.
		

			You know, the Algerian writer and philosopher Malik had been nubby. He died in in the 70s Raveena
Hola. He coined the term regarding our OMA called civilizational bankruptcy.
		

			And if less we have already civilizational bankruptcy. And basically, once again, colonial project
and full swing, he's one of the visionaries that said, you Muslims need to just chill out and stop
whining.
		

			I'm sorry, forgive me. Like about these days that never existed, right? Like things were really
great until the invasions happened in the colonial powers cancelled the Khilafah. Wrong.
		

			They weren't that great. They weren't. He's telling you. This is selective memory. This is defective
memory. Also, it's very dangerous to have this romanticized view of our history. Because if you
think an external force is what broke Allah's promise to support the believers who are upright, and
that's not the Allah we worship, right. And it means we can't solve anything because we didn't ruin
anything. It was someone else who ruined everything. Stop projecting blame. He's saying our Ummah,
in the political sense was called the old man of Europe for 300 years before the collapse was
cancelled, right or wrong before the abolishment of the Khilafah. He said you're just looking at
		

			like the the symptom of the political debacle.
		

			Before that, there was moral corruption. There was a dismantling of our morality. And before that,
the bedrock of our morality our deen our theology, our spirituality, our deen became more culture
than than Deen, right. A commitment to Allah Deen from that day in our indebtedness to Allah Subhana
Allah without, we didn't have that authentic God centric lifestyle. We were no longer known for
this. We no longer enjoyed this. And so the morality fell. And that was just the tip of the iceberg.
That was just the end result. That was the straw that broke the camel's back, which is the political
system sort of got dissolved.
		

			He's saying but we were bankrupt way before that. The fact that colonialism found a landing site for
its conspiracy or found a landing site for its foreign ideas is because the Muslim heart and mind
before that, he says another term he coins was colonized double, what made us colonized double the
vacuum inside he says.
		

			And so that is the root cause. And the reason why we will unless we recognize this continue as
individuals or societies be cycled through, tossed around from one ism to another ism, because the
problem is not the ISM. The problem is our vulnerability to the ISM. Does that make sense? Jimmy? So
may Allah azza wa jal make us people who are self determined to rebuild say I mean
		

			we ask Allah to have Artico Tala by his most beautiful names and his loftiest attributes to make us
of those who build solutions instead of just whining about problems. Allahumma Amin May Allah
subhanaw taala make us people that are better at anchoring the good. Even more so than we are at
dismantling and uprooting the evil Satan.
		

			mean
		

			we ask Allah to auto Italia to make us better at providing solutions for the world over describing
them and observing them from the sidelines Allahumma Amin May Allah make us an OMA that returns to
being better at lighting candles than disapproving of the darkness Allahumma Alameen wa sallahu wa
salam ala kind of e&m hamadryad he was on the edge very