Mustafa Khattab – Challenges of Muslim Youth in North America 1
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AI: Transcript ©
And I looked at the program and, inshaAllah,
the other,
speakers, the other brothers, they will cover more,
they will touch more on the problems,
of the Muslim youth here and also how
to preserve our Muslim identity.
I usually like to begin with a Hadith
from the Prophet
narrated by our Bullen Abbas.
So the Prophet
says,
So the Prophet SAW Alaihi Wasallam says in
this wathintikhadith,
You have to take advantage of 5 things
before the coming of 5 things.
So number 1,
take advantage of your youth years before you
get old.
And number 2, take advantage of your health
before
you become
sick,
before you lose your health.
Number 3, take advantage of your richness if
you have money before you become
poor. And number 3 number 4,
take advantage of your free time before you
become busy.
Number 5, the last one, take advantage of
your life before you die.
And I always say that life is very
short. Even if you live 60 or 17
years,
nuloshua'at
Haifa. Life is very short.
Okay?
So we have to be careful about this.
The youth years is the best time, the
bloom of everyone's life.
They say when you chart you start as
a child, you start at the beginning
of the triangle like a pyramid.
When you become a youth, you go to
the peak. And when you start to grow
old, you go down.
So you have to take advantage of these
years. This is the best time
in your life.
I consider myself
privileged to be in Canada. I've traveled to
many other places,
and I see how Muslims suffer
because of the bias, because of the racism
in non Muslim countries.
And also,
even in some Muslim countries, Muslims who try
to practice the religion,
they have a miserable life.
If you read or heard about Tunisia before
the revolution,
women were not allowed to wear the hijab.
Men were not allowed to go to the
masjid to pray.
But here in Karat Alhamdulillah,
we have this freedom,
so we should be grateful, friend.
The problem is,
the more freedom
we have, the more democracy we have, some
of us, especially
the youth, they abuse
this freedom.
They abuse it. For example,
those of us who are born here, our
youth,
they know the system, they know how the
work how the system works.
So for example, the parents
who were born and raised outside when they
come here, they try to raise up their
kids in an Islamic way
and of course
the kids, the youth, they know the system
here so they are resistant.
If for example,
the father is trying to encourage his son
to pray but the son doesn't want to
pray
and the son gets bored,
he will say for example to his parents,
you know what?
If you keep pushing me or you put
your finger on me, I'm gonna call 911.
They will throw you in jail.
They abused the system. They abused the freedoms
given to them here. And the kids know
and they tell them at school,
if your father puts his finger, you give
us a call and we will take care
of him. We'll fix him up.
New York style.
Okay?
So this is the situation here. And I
have seen
many of our youth,
especially in the Somali community. I've been here
for almost a year and I know the
situation.
Many of our youth, they are lost to
drugs,
to crime,
to street life. And I've heard some statistics
about how many Somali
youth, they have been shot or stabbed to
death here in Edmonton and elsewhere.
So we have a very serious problem.
And me working as
the imam of the mashil, people come to
me every day. And most of the people
who come, they come with problems.
Okay.
Someone is fighting with his wife, a lady
fighting with her husband, they are shooting at
each other, killing each other off. But many
of the problems
are related to the youth.
Some brothers, they come to me and say,
my son has a girlfriend.
My daughter
has a boyfriend.
And I remember one brother in the US,
he came to me and he said
that his daughter
got pregnant by her non Muslim friend. What
can I do?
Another man came and said his daughter
Another
time, some youth came to me and they
were in tears, and they told me that
their Muslim friend and these youth were Muslim.
They said their Muslim friend, who was originally
from India or Pakistan, I don't really remember,
committed suicide. He killed himself.
So people always come to me when it
is too late.
So what can I do if your son
committed a crime and now he is in
jail?
Or your son killed himself?
Or your son is an addict. What can
I do? I'm not a superman. I'm just
a man. They always come to me when
it is too late.
So it is important
that we as parents, that we as youth,
we start early.
We take the necessary steps to prevent the
harm before it happens and before it is
too late.
If something bad happens to the youth they
are not practicing
or if they are lost to the street
life or the crime
life, I don't blame the youth, I blame
the parents.
The Prophet SAW Salam says in the authentic
Hadith,
The Prophet salawahu alaihi wa sallam says in
the authentic hadith,
every child
is born free of sin, the fitham,
like a blank page. A white page.
What the parents basically do, they draw whatever
they want on that page.
They can make this child a Christian or
a Jew or a drunkard
or a junkie or a smoker or an
addict, whatever they want.
Or a tooth, a thief,
whatever they want. This is what they do.
We form
our kids in any way we want. And
this is what the prophet
says.
You look at the parents, most of them
are busy. The father working 2, 3 shifts
to put food on the table, he wants
to get rich, so he doesn't have time
to teach his kids.
The mother, she doesn't
know anything about Islamic studies, or she doesn't
even know how to say Fatihah. How can
she teach the kids?
And the parents,
now, alhamdulillah, they have enough money. They don't
take their kids to the masjid to learn.
They don't take them to the Islamic school
school. They take them to to be educated
by Nuh, al Mahdoo bi alayh Muhammad al
Thalmi.
So these are the teachers of our kids.
So what do they learn from them? You
all know. You'll find your kids coming to
you talking about Christmas and Halloween and Valentine's
and all that stuff.
We leak these problems.
Also,
even if the parents have some time, they
are not good teachers. They are not.
For example, we always
ask our youth and our kids to do
things that we ourselves don't do.
And we sometimes tell them not to do
things that we do every minute.
Like the father
is a heavy smoker, and he is telling
his kids,
if you smoke, you're an idiot.
And the dad is having the cigarette with
weed
with him, and he is smoking and
breathing,
smoking his son's face. Or the mom tells
her kid, her daughter, if you back buy
it, you'll go to the *.
And the mother backbites
every minute.
She's a professional backbiter.
Okay?
So this
seems hypocritical to the kids. They are asking
us to do something but
they do something completely different. It's hypocritical.
So the parents shoot themselves in the foot.
They don't practice what they preach.
Also, if the kids go to or the
youth, they go to the masjid
to learn mashallah. They have come a long
way. Most of our youth, they don't go
to the masjid.
But even when they go to the masjid,
they don't find a role model in the
masjid. They don't have one in the house.
They don't have one in the school, in
the public school. And even when they go
to the masjid, there's no raman, foodwa,
majjid, foodwa, the 2.
For example,
I remember
one of the imams in the US,
he told me that a few years ago,
there were 2 imams in 1 masjid,
and people split before the Khutba, so
some of them, they wilted 1 imam to
give the Khutba,
and the other group, they wanted the other
imam to give the hukba so they had
a fight,
okay, in the masjid.
So someone
wanted to make peace so he called 911
and the police came.
And the people were fighting and screaming and
bleeding in the masjid.
So the police came in and the policemen
started to log in the masjid on the
carpet with his shoes. So some of the
brothers came running and they were mad. Hey
policeman, this is Bida'amal, this is haram, you
don't walk on the masjid with your shoes,
Uman. So what about fighting and screaming and
pleading in the masjid? This is not Bida'am?
What are you talking about?
This reminds me of a saying that
Sheikh Uthman
told me a few weeks ago,
when you do something that is not acceptable
and
there is something else that is done that
is also not acceptable.
In the masjid. What kind of mentality is
this?
Right?
Also, most of our masjid,
they are not this is the sad reality.
Most of our masjid,
they are not youth friendly.
They are not.
Most of the masajid are dominated by the
old people,
bald,
fallen teeth, a kid with 2 feet in
the grave.
They're always in control. They make policies,
They dominate,
and they they make themselves feel like they
own the masjid.
The young ones, the youth, they feel like
yes. They don't they don't feel welcome in
the masjid.
And
every time a unit comes to the masjid,
even
even if I don't like their haircut or
their clothes,
I have to accommodate them in the masjid
because
this white guy comes or this young sister
comes, there are 1,000 out there who never
come to the mashem.
So we have to appreciate the fact that
this brother or this brother or this sister,
they came a long way. They could have
been somewhere else
playing games or
moving around aimlessly like zombies.
But alhamdulillah, they come to the masjid. There
there's goodness in them.
They have to ask. This is why they
are here.
But every time the old people in the
masjid, they see them, they started
criticizing
them. Now look at this guy. He is
coming to the masjid for shorts.
Or this sister, she is not wearing proper
khilah.
You know, suit. What is this? Is that
mentioned a club?
It's only a brother. You know, relax. Relax.
Take a chill pill. Okay?
Relax.
First of all, there is no there is
no there is nothing called Islamic uniform, but
there is what there is what they call
Islamically
acceptable uniform.
If the dress is decent and it is
covering the body, I don't care care if
you come in a soccer training
uniform or hockey uniform
or
Santa Claus uniform.
Doesn't matter. As long as you are decent,
it's okay.
And if we start criticizing people
at the masjid,
and if we only allow practicing people
to come to the masjid, this is like
just like a doctor putting a sign on
his clinic that says, if you are sick,
don't come to my clinic.
It's the exact same thing.
Okay?
The masjid is is just like a clinic.
It's just like a hospital. 2 people come
to the masjid.
There are healthy people who come for regular
checkups,
and there are sick people, they come for
treatment.
If you tell them you are not allowed
to come to the masjid, then who is
allowed to come?
So we should appreciate the fact that these
brothers come to the masjid, and they come
a long way. They could have been somewhere
else.
The imams is another
terrible problem we have in the Muslim community.
I have traveled in Canada, in the US,
and I have seen many imams, and we
had imam conferences.
We have one in Texas, one in in
New York, and we have
somewhere between 305
100 Imams
from the US and from Canada.
And the great majority of them, they didn't
speak English, man.
I'm not talking about Somali or Urdu or
no. No English.
All they do is give a football in
Arabic. And most of the people in the
community, most of the people who come to
the masjid for Jummah,
they don't speak Arabic, man. They speak only
English.
So you see then,
these young brothers and sisters, the youth, they
come to the masjid al Jum'ah. They are
being pushed to come because they don't understand
a thing. And the Imam is talking,
Chinese
or Arabic. It doesn't make any difference. They
don't understand anything anyway.
So you see that, who are you? They
are sitting there,
nodding
off, falling asleep,
digging in their nose, scratching their heads, sending
text messages.
What else can they do?
They don't have not understand a thing. Okay.
Or even Alhamdulillah the Imam
speaks English, it's a miracle,
the Imam
lives in another planet.
There's nothing the imam says in the masjid
that relates to the youth. So every time
the imam is talking about Ihlas, about Taqwa.
Ihlas and Taqwa. Ihlas in the time of
the Sahaba and Taqwa in the time of
the Sahaba. Ihlas in the time of the
Chinese. Ihlas in the time of the ancient
Egyptians.
This is the all the only thing they
talk about. Ihlas and Taqwa, righteousness
and sincerity.
But there's no talk about the problems of
the youth.
How can we empower the youth? And how
can we benefit
from this tremendous power that we have in
our community? The youth.
I remember
even
we will answer the questions at the end.
The Imams, they don't know the Western mentality.
Most of these Imams, they come from the
Middle East, from Egypt, and Syria, and other
places.
So they are good for the traditional mentality.
They are good for the old people.
But when it comes to the young folks,
they don't relate to them.
Most of these imams,
they think that the internet and computers
is one of the work works of the
shaitan. They
don't know nothing about the Internet or PowerPoint,
and they they live in another planet. They
lived 700 years ago.
Okay. In the Middle Ages. So they don't
relate to the youth. So even when the
youth come to them
with a problem, they are they are not
able
to give a sincere advice because they don't
know the mentality.
Okay.
And I give a couple of examples inshallah.
The first one,
a youth and his father came to an
imam in the US.
So the father said,
it's a disaster. My son has a girlfriend,
non Muslim girlfriend. What can we do, imam?
So the imam came to the youth
and he mentioned the hadith of the prophet
SAW. That a man came
to the prophet SAW. A youth
fix him up, so the Prophet
told them, leave him alone,
come close.
Would you allow your sister to commit adultery?
Surayud
said, no. Would you allow your mother to
commit adultery? He said, no.
Would you allow your daughter to commit adultery
in the future? So I said, no. So
the prophet says,
people
don't lie, and they don't approve of, and
they don't allow their daughters, their sisters, their
mothers to commit adultery.
So the man said, Okay, Prophet, I give
up. And the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
made dua for him and he said, I
will never commit adultery.
So this poor shaykh from the US,
he was thinking with that mentality.
I know this hadith. If we tell it
to someone from back home, they have some
Islamic basics, some Islamic bringing up,
of course, this will be enough for them.
But our kids here,
it's a different completely different generation, completely different
mentality.
These traditional answers
don't work for them. So the sheikh, the
poor sheikh,
came to the youth and spoke to him
in broken English and he said,
my young brother,
would you allow your sister to to have
a a boyfriend?
So the youth says,
if she wants to,
fine with me.
Again,
the Hashem was given a traditional as he
doesn't understand the mentality
of the youth.
The other thing is
before we criticize our kids in the masjid
or in the house, if you want to
correct them,
first of all, you have to say something
good about them before you give them the
advice or before you criticize them. And this
is right there in the sunnah.
There is an luthentikadeem
that the prophet says
that Abulahir Nohmar
is a great man
if only he prays some rakats at night.
Abulahir Nohmar was a youth, he used to
pray with the prophet Nohmar is a great
man, if only he prays some rakats at
night. Abulahir Nohmar was a youth, he used
to pray with the prophet Nohmar, and he
would go straight to sleep and, you know,
sleep all night. So the prophet says, Abulai,
Muhammad, is a great person.
If he prays
at night, he will be
the best, the best there is.
So he corrected him, he criticized him, but
he said something good about him first. So
the narrator of this authentic hadith says, walay
from that lebon, Abu Lah ibn Umar used
to sleep to sleep very little at night.
He would stand most of the night in
Mir
because of the encouragement of the prophet
So now imagine if you are at the
home and the mother or the father comes
to the kid and said,
you idiot.
You are 20 years old and you don't
know how to say father what's wrong with
you? Are you nuts?
Wallahi, they will never listen to you.
But if you say, Masha'allah, son, you have
a very beautiful voice, but if only you
can work with your tazweed, you'll be the
great guy. You'll be like Dushawi or Abdul
Basuq Abu Khosaf. They will listen to you.
If you also do the same thing with
your wife or husband, if you want to
convey something to them and correct them, you
have to say something good first,
then correct them. If you want to protect
your life.
But if you like to be a hero
for a couple of minutes, then die 2
hours later, then this is up to you.
Correcting people and say good things first about
them is like operating on someone, doing a
surgery with someone.
Before you remove a harmful object from their
body, you have to give them what?
Anesthesia.
So anesthesia
is like good words before you operate with
someone and give them advice. And keep always
keep this in your head.
The Prophet SAW,
he understood
the mentality of the youth. He knew that
if you correct someone in public, especially the
youth, the youth, they don't like to be
corrected.
And this is one thing we all we
humans have become. The youth,
they don't like to be corrected. If you
want them to do something, you cannot
twist their arm to do it. You have
to convince them.
So there is
a Sahabi by the name Khawwad
ibnuzubayat
Ansay.
He was from Medina
and he was a youth, very young,
like 15, 60, 17 years old, and he
just accepted Islam. So he was a new
Muslim,
and he didn't know much about Islam. So
he went out in a camp with the
Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam. And this is an
authentic hadith in the book of Al Tabarani,
a collection of hadith like Bukhari and Muslim.
So they went to the camp right outside
Madin.
So in the break,
Khawadin al Zubayl was walking around.
So he saw me those beautiful ladies chit
chatting to the side. They were non Muslim,
I think, I assume.
So he went to them
and when he looked at them, they were
beautiful so he ran to his tent, he
put his nicest clothes and he came back
and sat with the ladies and he started
to chitchat and hing and hing and hang
ho and all that stuff
and having fun.
And all of a sudden, Kawai said, I
saw the prophet salaam standing in front of
me and the ladies.
And he said that the prophet salaam was
so charismatic
when I saw him.
I wished that the earth could open up
and swallow me and not to see me
in this awkward situation sitting with the ladies
and laughing with them and cracking jokes with
them.
So the prophet said
what are you doing here with the ladies?
So Hawwad ibn Jaba' said, I didn't know
what to say.
The only thing that came to my mind
at that time I said, O Prophet of
Allah,
I have a wild camel
and these ladies, masha'Allah, may Allah reward them,
are making a rope for me so I
tie my camel so it doesn't run away.
Khawad said,
Walwari,
I knew I was alive.
And the Prophet knew
I was alive,
but he didn't say anything. He smiled and
left.
Then Hawwaq said, and this is Al Abundikhadim
again in Sahih Tabran.
Said, one day I was walking in the
street,
I saw the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
walking in front of me, so I wanted
to avoid him. So he doesn't ask me
about the camel thing and all that, story.
So the prophet saw
me
coming behind him,
so he stopped.
When I saw him stopping, I started to
slow down so I don't catch up with
him. So the prophet
called me and said, come here. Come here.
By the way, what happened to your wild
camel you were telling me about the other
day?
So Fawaz said, Wallahi, I was so embarrassed.
I didn't know what to tell the prophet
Then he said, another day,
I heard the prophet was coming behind me.
People calling him, giving him salaams and stuff.
So he knew that the prophet was coming,
so he started to walk faster.
So he said that the prophet
walked even faster than me. He caught up
with me. Then he said, Come here. Come
here. What happened to your wild camel you're
telling me about?
So he said, Well, Allah had given the
one to tell them.
Another time he said, I was praying in
the masjid.
Sunnat Hayatul Masjid. Then the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam came in.
Then the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam prayed
the 2 rakas Hayatul Masjid. Then he finished.
When I saw him standing next to me,
I knew he was coming for me.
So I made the salah very long, so
the Prophet
will get bored and leave and leave me
alone.
So the Prophet
came closer to me and said,
I've got all day. I'm waiting for you.
I'm in trouble.
So as soon as Rasalayna,
the prophet
came to visit, by the way, what happened
to you, wow, camel?
So Hawwar
said, wal Bani, I will give the Prophet
Sallallahu Alaihi wa sallam an answer to put
his heart at ease and to leave me
alone. So he said, oh Prophet of Allah,
the good news is my camel has just
accepted this land, it will never run away
again.
So he said to the prophet, salaam alayhi
wa sallam, The
prophet, salaam alayhi wa sallam, smiled, and he
made dua for him.
So imagine if the prophet, salaam, criticized him
in public,
or that he tarred and feathered him, and
he made him an example
to the people. He would just run away.
He will never come to the masjid again.
But the Prophet
understood the mentality of the youth.
I will finish, I will conclude with the
role of the youth in our community, but
I will have to
to introduce this by talking about how to
empower our youth.
There are 3 things we have to do.