Morad Awad – Muslims DefyingtheOdds
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We start by praising Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
and sending our peace and blessings to our
beloved prophet Muhammad alaihis salatu wa salam.
Now I remind myself and yourselves on this
blessed day of
to fear Allah
As Allah said in the Quran,
All you who believe, fear Allah the way
he should be feared and do not die
except
in the state of complete submission to him.
We ask Allah to die in the state,
and to be resurrected in the state, and
to grant us a progeny
that live and die in the state.
Brothers and
sisters,
in Islam,
as we look at
the world
around us today and the changes that are
taking place,
and we reflect on the sunan of Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala.
As
there
are ways
or patterns
that Allah
placed in this universe and in his creation,
so that we can reflect on
things
that
are like laws
in this universe.
And one of those laws
is
And it is these days that we alternate
between
people.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala alternates
the situations
of people, and the situations of nations,
and civilizations.
One day, one can be healthy or 1
year they can be healthy. Another, they can
be sick.
One day they can be safe, another
they can be unsafe.
1 they could be full and one they
can be hungry.
And likewise,
with nations,
once
at a certain time or era, they can
be
powerful
and have a strong and dominant reign, and
in others,
they don't.
So
And recently, I've been reflecting on this as
I visited a masjid that was
previously a church.
And recently converted into a masjid.
And I couldn't help
but reflect on
the struggles
of the people
who attended that church prior
to them
selling it. And obviously, they would not sell
it unless they
didn't have people
to congregate in it or to utilize that
facility.
And I couldn't help but think of what
the state of mind of
the people were.
These elderly
men
and women
who were perhaps, thinking of
whether their children
would come and populate
this place of worship the way they did.
Whether they would be enthusiastic
about spirituality
and about the faith the way they were.
But you know the sunan of Allah do
not
habih. They do not,
align themselves with anyone.
They apply to everyone
with no question.
Today, as as a Muslim community
and as a Muslim,
there's no doubt that we
are experiencing
experiencing several challenges.
Challenges that we perhaps never faced the likes
of in the history of Islam.
In the past 14 centuries, we never seen
anything like these challenges.
Challenges
in our future,
where we are,
where we reside,
People
Now we we see studies, and surveys, and
statistics
about about
Okay.
How many What's the percentage
of
of Muslim youth that identify as Muslim, are
proud of their faith, fall into
surround themselves with friends
that are not perhaps religious
or do not help them
stay
within the realm of Islam.
We we see we read these statistics and
we see
this data
that is alarming to all of us. Right?
And we see
people speak about Islam,
who are presidents or leaders of certain countries
that claim that
Islam is
on the downfall, and they say and and
they are perhaps the reason
of that in the nation they're in charge
of. And I won't mention which nation, or
what this person's name to keep the minbar
of the Messenger
pure from the likes of this person.
Enforcing laws
to ban abayas in in the educational
sectors,
or to ban niqab in public settings, or
to ban,
even worship,
or teaching
basic tenets of morality
to our children.
Subhanallah, we see these things
in our times, and they're very evident,
and they're very alarming.
And it and it makes us question about,
k, our future.
Islamophobia
is still
spreading and is still
rampant.
Right? It isn't
any weaker than it was post 911.
The only thing that changes that the Muslims
are now more educated.
We're more aware.
We're more alert. We understand.
We're learning from our experiences.
Hence, making it
easier to respond.
But before, it wasn't like that.
And the Islamophobic industry is still as
as funded as it used to be.
Morality,
the way
it's known to us and it has been
known to humanity, certain
basics
in in our morality is being questioned. SubhanAllah.
Now, we used to worry about
sending our children out to school or to
college or to dorm in certain places,
worried if they're going to come back with
an illegitimate relationship or marry someone outside of
the culture or outside of the faith, or
so on and so forth. Now,
we're worried about a whole complete different
set
of issues.
We're worried they're
going to come back questioning
certain
biological
facts
about themselves and the way they identify and
and so on and so forth. So
so much has changed
in a single generation,
and more so the generation of Muslims in
the West.
I personally think, and this is my assessment
of our reality,
I think that
there's perhaps no generation in the history of
Islam
that experienced
generational change
the way we did, us sitting here today.
Not only
did we experience
the change in
in,
you know, in philosophy or in in in
governing systems and and whatnot. No. But we,
for the most part, and I'm looking at
everyone
here,
the majority of us are people that moved
or or have parents or grandparents
or great grandparents that migrated
from other parts of the world
and came here.
And they came with their own
culture,
and they came with their own Islamic
methodology or their own their
own understanding of Islam, with their own scholarly
references and and whatnot.
And then we
we come to this world in a completely
different A secular paradigm that divides religion and
state, whereas,
you know, everyone is free to practice their
religion equally, and the thoughts and our ideas
are are colliding
and are producing
different understandings.
So a child or someone that grows up
here has to not only
grow up
and and have one understanding of Islam, one
Imam of a Masjid,
one one sheh, one
school curriculum,
one predominant,
I guess
ideology or governing system that they have to
adhere to, but we're comparing all of these
together.
Every
color
of skin, every
color of thought,
every ideology,
every religion, all in this melting pot
to collide
together and and create this conglomerate that we
live in.
Making it very challenging
for these generations to to have a sound
understanding
of their faith.
One may look around at the Muslim world
and and see the issues or the problems
that Muslims are going through. The Ummah is
experiencing.
Starting from as far as as
China
to the east.
With our brothers and sisters from the Uyghurs
or the Rohingya,
who as we speak, a genocide is taking
place against them. May Allah
be with them and aid them.
Or places where clear apartheid is being practiced
in segregation,
and injustice,
and occupation like our brothers and sisters in
Kashmir
and in Palestine.
May Allah
alleviate
their situation.
And all over the world, we see
what
Muslims
are going through and experiencing. And this is
not something that's hidden but it's apparent to
everyone around the world.
Knowing all this,
one may say to themselves,
the odds
are
seem to be against us.
But
unlike
any other faith,
unlike any other ideology,
unlike any other philosophy,
unlike any other intellectual
paradigm that existed
throughout the history of mankind,
Islam,
when studying
its history in-depth, is the only religion
that prevailed
more
and prevailed,
I guess, more effectively,
for lack of better words,
in times
where the odds were completely and utterly against
them, like Islam.
There is no religion that prevailed
when all of the odds were against them
the way Islam prevailed
when all of the odds
were against
us. Early on in the seerah we learned
this.
From the time where Rasulullah
and the believers
were in Mecca
being persecuted, they had to run away
to Abyssinia, a different country,
just to to save their lives. And Muhammad
and his companion Abu Bakr as Sadiq
had to flee, flee Mecca for their lives.
Wanted dead or alive.
Imagine,
sitting in a cave, Rasulullah
He sits Abu Bakr next to him, and
Abu Bakr with the signs of grief
and sadness on his on his face,
having left his own city, and the people
that he loved, and the property that he
owned, and the wealth that he had, leaving
everything behind him. The Rasul
told him, Don't be sad. Allah is with
us.
Allah is with us. A statement that
is as that should ring in the heart
and the mind of every believer
until the day of judgment.
Allah is with us.
In this situation,
Allah
saved him.
He went to Madinah, established
a very small state with a very small
population of people.
And then
the mushrikeen plotted
with an army 3 times the size of
the army of the muslimeen.
All of the odds
were against the muslimeen.
When it comes to strategy, the odds were
against them. When it comes to weapons, the
odds were against them. When it comes to
terrain, the odds were against every single thing.
If you were to study the battle of
Badr from a to z, all of the
odds were against the Muslimen.
If they wanted to put bet You know
those betting systems they use today in games
and horse rides, and fights, and so on
and so forth. All of the odds would
be
for other than the Muslimeen, and that is
when the Muslimeen prevailed.
The same thing in the battle of the
ditch in the khandaq,
when all of the tribes of Arabia gathered
against
the the believers, outnumbering
them by
by 5 or 6 times.
The same thing applies
in the battle of
in the battle of Mutta,
where 3,000
believers
went to defend themselves
after being threatened.
They went to defend themselves because that's all
they had, 3,000.
They want to defend
Islam
for what it was at that time against
a millennia old civilization,
the Roman
civilization
with its trained
armies.
200,000.
All of the odds were against the Muslim
Inn.
But what happened?
Islam continued,
and Islam prevailed.
The same thing in the battle of Hadeen,
when the crusade
almost
annihilated
what was left of the dawla of Islam
at that time.
And in the battle of
when all of the odds were against the
muslimeen,
when they had to fight one of the
strongest empires
and largest
civilization
with the vastest
plots of land in the world, in the
history of mankind, the tatar and the makhul.
Every time
in the history of Islam, we thought
it ended.
They thought it was over. They thought
there was no hope. Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala
sent his victory
from him.
And today, subhanAllah where we live,
Islam
is being challenged by every ism that exists
in the world today.
From
socialism, communism, marxism,
capitalism,
and what not, and atheism, and secularism, and
every ism we could think of. All these
isms are coming, and and
they're challenging
this 1400
year old,
creed,
ideology.
And until today,
it still stands strong.
It stands with its proofs and evidences.
It stands strong against
against those thoughts and ideas proving itself,
giving itself a place,
and not rendering itself obsolete like other faiths.
Islam unlike any other religion will always and
will continue to be relevant.
You would think that the religion
that uses the oldest
unchanged book in history, a book that revision
was never
was never done to.
No one ever revised the words. No one
ever changed the meanings. No one ever took
out or replaced any single word within it.
You would think that would be the religion
that breaks first.
That would be the religion
that is obsolete first. That would be the
religion that's irrelevant to modernization in the modern
world first. But, no. What we
come to see in our time,
and for Allah is the and the honor
and the dignity,
we see that Islam still stands strong.
So I ask my beloved brothers and sisters
today, on this blessed day of Yomul Jum'ah,
be strong with your faith, be strong with
your deen, be strong because what we are
experiencing today is something unprecedented,
And you are paving the path and laying
the foundation
of something beautiful that's being built for the
future of Islam and the muslimeen, inshallah
The the hijrah,
the immigration of Muslims from all over the
world, brothers and sisters.
And
the the mix of these our thoughts, our
cultures, our ethnicities,
everything about us,
It created something beautiful.
And in the past 100 years, if you
were to see
how much of Islam was in the English
language 100 years ago,
You would say English was not a language
of Islam, it was a language that opposes
Islam.
But a 100 years later
Now we're in 2023,
a 100 years from the fall of the
Ottoman Khalifa.
100 years later,
where English was perceived as something. Now English
has more resources about Islam
than even Persian and Malay. And they've been
Muslim for
for centuries.
And this is only from the fadl of
Allah and the namah of Allah.
Scholarly
discussions, talks, debates. You open YouTube, you see
the debates in speakers corner and visit, and
so on, so forth.
Everyone is taking pride in their faith, and
we see Islam prevailing
And this is only from the father of
Allah
So let us take pride in our faith.
Let us teach our children to carry on
this legacy, to be proud of their religion,
and make sure that this religion is their
identity
I ask
Allah to forgive us and have mercy on
us. I ask Allah
to be with our oppressed brothers and sisters
in Islam all over the world. I ask
Allah to make us beakers of light in
this land and to allow us to spread
the Islam wherever we go. We ask Allah
to guide us to what is good, and
to guide us to staying firm upon it,
and to guide us away from evil, and
to guide us away from it.
InshaAllah. We
we sent a few flyers in
in
the