Mustafa Khattab – Religion vs. Tradition
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AI: Transcript ©
Today, inshaAllah,
I'm going to be talking for about 30
up to 40 minutes about a very serious
topic
which is religion
versus
or and tradition.
And before I start off with my topic,
I'm going to talk briefly about
the 1st January
2012
and what it means
to you as a Muslim living in Canada.
Of course, some people are excited when a
new year begins,
but if you're able to sit back and
reflect on your life,
your life in this world. The more you
live,
the closer you get to the end. And
those of you who know me, you know
that I usually start with a joke,
but this is a very serious topic.
I'm gonna use some jokes within this speech,
but I have to start off
this way. So you have to sit back
and reflect on your life. What did you
do in the past year or in the
past years of your life?
There's no guarantee
there's no guarantee
that anyone of us
will live as many years as you have
already lived.
I'm 34,
and I don't know for sure if I'm
gonna live on 34.
One thing I know for sure,
after working for Al Rashid as an imam
for 1 year,
I will be lucky if I make it
to 40. I'm telling you right now.
It's very hard. Believe me.
Most of the time, when people come to
me for counseling
and they have problems
in their lives
with their kids,
or the husband of his wife, the wife
of her husband, they have fights,
they shoot at each other,
yes, they do sometimes,
and they call the police on one another,
I'm 1 on 1 in the middle of
the
night,
and they come to my office bleeding
as usual, and I tell them, please
don't don't bleed on my couch. It's new.
And,
yes,
So if you are an individual
and you put your desires in front of
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, then you have a
problem in your life.
For example,
when you sit
and play video games for 12 hours and
and don't pray on time,
then you put your desires in front of
Allah subhanahu wa'ala. Go pray on time, then
come back and play anytime you want. But
can you make sure that the 5 minutes
when it is time to salaham and pray?
Also, as families, when we put our cultures
and our traditions before our Muslim, we
have a problem.
For example,
when a father
forces his daughter
to marry her cousin
who lives back home, 10000 miles away, they
have nothing in public. He doesn't speak English.
He doesn't know the culture.
Now
the father is putting the culture, the tradition
before Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. The
Tradition versus religion.
Okay, what is a tradition?
What's a culture?
Anyone define culture for me? Yes?
What's a culture?
Adam.
Adam. Ashwin?
Okay. So tradition is something that is passed
on from a generation to another.
The practices, the beliefs, the attitudes that we
get from our parents and our parents,
and they're in turn also got got these
traditions from their parents.
In this land, there are 2 types of
traditions.
There are traditions that are acceptable.
This is acceptable in Islam.
If you are a cowboy from Texas
and you wear the cowboy hat, there's another
woman in Islam because it's acceptable to Islamic
them to go this way.
If you eat with a fork
women pay the dowry the month to pay
in India.
This is the culture over there.
And I wish so many guys here, they
wish they were born and raised in India,
so when they get married, they get money.
Yeah. Here's one.
And so on and so on and so
forth. The the examples are so new, and
maybe we'll touch on some of them in
our speech. So the first type is acceptable,
the second one is not acceptable.
We as Muslims living in Canada,
Somalia, and other places,
they came
here because they have a lot of
political tension back home, a lot of corruption
back home. So they came here seeking a
better life.
So they came
back home,
they hid the cultures, and they hid the
traditions from the bottom of their heart, and
they tried to be more Canadian than Canadians.
Right?
So they hate their original countries, so they
live here. They try to assimilate in the
society, and they also teach their kids to
be more Canadian or to be more,
Canadianized,
if I may use this word, than Canadians
themselves.
So they cut off all the relationships they
have with back
home. So this is the first time. The
second
child
parents are those who come here,
We'll go there. We'll go back home Monday
and shut up. Then after 200 years, they
are still here, but they still live in
the back home in town. Okay?
In 2 minutes, we're gonna talk about assimilation
and integration.
They don't mean the same thing.
Does anyone here know the difference between to
assimilate and integrate as a Muslim in the
Canadian society?
Anyone?
Good. Integrate?
This is assimilate. What is integrate?
Exactly. Hashallah. Thank you.
So integrate
is to preserve your own values,
your own traditions,
and your own beliefs,
and morals, and principles. And in the meantime,
you accept and you take the good of
the Canadian society.
So if Canadians, for example, respect the law,
this is what you do.
If they aspire to get the highest degrees
in the society and to get the highest
pay
and to get nice homes, nice cars to
live a decent decent life by preserving your
identity as a Muslim,
by preserving your values, there's nothing wrong with
this.
But to assimilate
to assimilate
to lose your identity
and follow other people. Assimilate is basically to
imitate other people and to ignore and overlook
and lose your Muslim identity.
So for example, a people date,
you date like them.
If they drink, you drink like them.
If they go hot,
they smoke weed, crack, and goat,
all those things, you know,
this is what you do.
So this is assimilation and this is not
acceptable Islam rule. You have to preserve your
identity
and you can also take the best of
the Canadian society. Of course, Alhamdulillah, we have
more freedoms here in Canada than we do
in some Muslim countries.
There is respect for the law, there's human
rights, civil rights, and everything that some of
us don't have back up, and this is
something we shouldn't enjoy.
But every now and then, at Al Rashid,
I get someone
who comes to me and says, okay, my
my son is doing drugs.
Oh, our friend was shot to death because
he was selling drugs on the street. This
is not acceptable, man. This is not acceptable.
So this is the difference between tradition
and and religion and also assimilation and integration.
Why do some of us lose their identity
and follow
cultures, maybe the background culture or the cultures
from here, and lose their Muslim identity?
There are several reasons.
Number 1,
some of us, especially the older generation,
they have what they call the efriardi
complex.
Efriardi complex, and I'll get to this in
a minute.
The prophet
tells us in Anufidikhadim
Qur'an, but it's the parents
that make you whatever you become, anything else.
They make you
Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist,
a junkie, a junker,
Whatever.
Most of the time, if you look at
the people in this world, if you take
religion as an example, 95%,
at least,
of the people in the world, they follow
their religions of their parents.
So if someone is born
in
take me as an example. If I was
born in Latin America,
of course, my name would be Roberto Mustafa,
and most likely, I'll be Catholic.
Will be an atheist.
So this is what I'm talking about. This
is the tradition we follow other people.
Allah
says in the Quran that whenever the prophet
So the people always said,
what your teaching is new to us.
We just walk in the footsteps of our
parents.
And they say in Arabic,
I've come in the state
or tradition that is wrong, Israeli
accepted
by the people, then a forgotten truth. If
something is not known, people don't follow it,
but they follow what is familiar to them
even if it's wrong.
So some people have the the inferiority
complex. They think when they look at
the countries we have back home, Egypt, Somalia,
other countries,
that our people back home are backward.
They are messed up completely.
A lot of corruption.
Now they look at the West and they
say, look at these people. They they have
a lot of advances in technology and science,
and these people are good. They're better than
us, so we have to be like them
so we can be as good as they
are.
And we have to cut off our relationship
with back home because these people are they're
married. They're backward.
So in order for us to break loose
and to join,
you know, advanced people.
So this is number 1, the inferiority
complex.
Number 2,
the educational
system.
Most of us, if you go to
a public system of education,
you are taught by
who? Magdul Gharay bin
Walad Ali.
Right?
So you'll not have sound educational system when
you go to the schools. Right?
And this is not a Muslim country, I
know. If you go to a public school,
make sure at least you get some Islamic
knowledge
from your parents or from the Masjid or
from the imam, so on and so forth.
At least know the basics of your faith,
the values
of your tradition. This is number 2.
Number 3, the Islamic environment.
If you look around in the streets,
if you go to school,
here and there,
you don't see the Islamic values that, you
know, we get from back home.
And this is the environment.
I will give you example, a couple of
examples from the Islamic literature.
Close but not close enough.
Who was Omar Abdul Aziz? Yes?
He was.
He was?
So Omar ibn Abdul Aziz
was a young
guy,
and
he was probably 10, 12 years old.
And his father had that teacher for him.
He made sure that he taught him educational
Islamic manners and values and stuff,
and he made sure that he prayed a
good time.
So
one time, Umar al Abdel Aziz was playing
Musalah.
So
the teacher
wrote to the father of Omar Abdelaziz, Abdelaziz
in Nurawala,
and he told him
the teacher asked Omar Abdelaziz, why are you
late for salah?
Completely.
So he doesn't have to worry about the
style of his hair, and he will be
there on time.
And Imam al Sha'a, when
he was young, when he probably
was your age,
What's your name again? Adam Adam? Adam.
He was probably the age of Adam who
was walking in the market and singing poetry
in Arab.
So a man came from the back and
slapped him from the back and said,
it's haram for someone your age to say
poetry and you don't be slat, you study
the Quran and stuff.
So he remembered that the slap he got,
and he started to study Quran. He made
the oath of the whole Quran, and he
became imam
Their parents, their fathers
died before they were born, Imam Shaka and
Imam Khazal.
They were taught by them,
by their moms.
Their moms used to work
manual jobs to provide for them, and they
became
2 of the most knowledgeable people of Islam.
So this is what I mean by the
Islamic environment. You see people around you doing
something good, you follow their example.
This is why
it's easy for you in Ramadan to fast
because everyone around you is fasting.
But if you break some days from Ramadan
for any reason,
then you start to fast after Ramadan, you
are the only one in the house fasting
or in the school or in the masjid,
it becomes very hard for you.
So this is the Muslim environment.
Number 4
is
the raw model.
If you ask me what most people about
their role model in life, they usually mention
the name of,
an actor,
a dancer,
missing to follow Barcelona
or any other team. So these are the
role models.
And I remember about 3 years ago, one
guy one guy came to me. He was
like 13 years old.
13 years old.
And you see how tall I am?
Very tall, right? So he was much taller
than me. This guy, 13 years old, and
he was taller than me. And he said,
Sheikh Sheikh.
And, of course,
I have to stand on my
fingertips so I can hear him. He was
very tall and,
probably stand on the chair so I can
hear him. So he said,
Where do we look for role models in
our life? Of course, number 1, your parents.
Your parents, they have to be role models
for you.
You look for role models in the school,
the teachers,
your peers, your friends.
When you go to the masjid, you look
up to the people in the masjid who
cry in the first night
because, masha Allah, they prayed 3 times a
day in the masjid, and, masha Allah, they
have, Alhamu al salah in their forehead.
And so on as well they are always
in the Masjid, they are always crying in
the salah until you see a tear, a
pool of tears in front of them in
the Masjid men. So they are they're almost
we always look up to them.
So these are the role models. So let's
for example take our parents
our parents at home.
If you want to learn something from your
parents,
they're always busy. Okay? Working. Your father is
working. If he's a cab driver or a
doctor or
what's even worse,
if they did tell you something, they teach
you something,
and they knew the exact opposite.
You see your father man coming to you
and say,
listen,
And she talks about people all the time,
all the
time.
I remember,
a kid came to his father
and he said
that do do women fly? The women fly.
So the woman said no. No. No. He
couldn't fly. He got no wings.
Sure. If we teach our kids to tell
the truth and we always lie,
and I remember
the I remember the story of someone who
was calling to check with another person,
and
the the little kid, the son answered the
phone.
So
the he the kid said, so and so
is on the phone.
He wants to talk to your
dad. So the father said I'm not here.
So the kid told the man,
my father is telling you that he's not
here.
You look at the critical to them. You
tell them something to do the exact opposite.
So these are the parents then.
These are the people we always look up
to. We learn from them.
Just forget about the parents.
Let's take a look at the school.
Of course, you go to the school, they
always teach you,
for example,
that
what?
They teach you about the Christmas and Halloween
and all that stuff
You were discovered by them, but you didn't
discover them.
Some people teach you that 1 +1+1
is 1.
Right?
People teach you that, for example
I'm gonna get into
Your friends at school, your peers that you
always look up to them.
You always try to imitate them.
Every new thing that they do
is cool,
although it might be dangerous. Not everything that
is new is cool. If you how can
you how can you want to be cool
if you live in Hinduism? You are surrounded
by snow 6 months of the year.
It doesn't get any cooler than this.
If you want to be cool, put yourself
in the fridge,
but don't irritate people blindly
and do the dangerous things they do. You
wanna try, go,
we,
to be as angry as they are?
This is not cool, man. This is not
cool.
And so on and so forth. The example
of somebody
do drugs, sell drugs. The other day,
I was coming from the graveyard,
not because I was dead, but because
rushing. Yeah, otherwise, I'll be walking around like
the zombie.
We were rushing to get to the masjid
for Isha
and all of a sudden,
I had
a very good brother of mine, his name
is Abu Hassan, he's almost 60 years old.
And he was driving, I was sitting next
to him and he was standing to the
masjid. And all of a sudden
It turned out to be that a kid,
a youth in front of us in a
van
was selling drugs.
And of course, you probably heard of the
new technique,
to give them pizza, and below the pizza,
they have weed and cocaine and drugs.
Very creative. Right? But they took the guys
to jail.
Is that how it happened to them? So
these are the peers you look up to,
and they always
they had 2 Imams in the Masjid, and
they start fighting
the old folks in the Masjid, they started
to fight
over who should give the footpath for Jannah.
This imam mister X or this imam mister
Sirsid.
Why don't you bash Allah Abu Ghad,
like Adam Nabil Nasr, he just called 911
to end the fight and make peace.
Again,
look at this, the people were fighting in
the masjid, killing each other off and bleeding
on the carpet.
When the police officers came, the people were
busy fighting.
So the police officers walked from the carpet
with their shoes.
They got inside with their guns man to
stop the fight.
It's a beautiful one. It says basically,
I don't eat
the meat of dead animals,
but I drink the soup of the meat
of dead animals.
It's exactly the same thing.
Walk in a carpet with your shoes on
is like beating people and bleeding in the
mess. It's exactly the same thing. Right?
Most of our messiahs
most of our messiahs in Canada, in the
US,
they are all
male
oriented.
This is for a fact. Right?
Male,
old,
Arab, or whatever, oriented. They are not youth
oriented.
They are not women
oriented. This is the the fact. Okay? This
is the fact.
So they always want to run on the
side and get into it, Los Angeles, California,
whatever,
as if
Okay.
Now when they use people like yourself go
to the masjid and you go early, masha'Allah,
because you love the imam.
Sure some do.
If you go with the masjid, you want
to sit right in front of the imam
and to get the knowledge, humor, humor for
the imam. You sit under his feet,
so you always
see someone from the old mosque
giving you the wicked look and telling you
to go to the back of the Masjid.
When you go to the middle of the
Masjid, he tells you this is not the
back of the Masjid, this is the middle
of the Masjid. I'm telling you about the
last straw
outside
because you are young.
So for them, young means idiot,
right?
1 of the Sahaba,
his name
was Amir
and he was 6
No.
People want answers.
Okay. PhD stands for 2 things.
Number 1, it stands for philosophy doctor, PhD,
English. Their English was closer to Chinese than
English because most of them,
they studied Islamic Arabic. Then they came here,
they started to pick a word from here
and work from there, and they started at
their old age. So English was closer to
Chinese than English. Because most of them, they
studied Islamic Arabic. Then they came here,
they started to pick a word from here
and
work
because of their age.
And the other thing is they know nothing
about technology. They know nothing about nothing.
So
when it comes to computers
and cameras and YouTube and
PowerPoint presentations I've had,
imams woken out like dinosaurs
because they live in the cave the stone
age. They have nothing to do with
it. So if you ask about
right?
So the prophet called him, made him alone.
Then the prophet
said come closer.
Would you allow your sister to take a
boyfriend?
He said no.
Their sisters, and their daughters to take boyfriends.
Then the prophet
put his hand on the chest
of the youth and said, oh, Allah forbid
his sins
and purify his heart and make him chaste.
So this youth, Leymah,
used to say, Mubayim, nothing has become more
hateful to me
and detestable to my heart and to bring
the adoption because of the prayer of the
prophet Sallallahu.
So this poor imam,
So
he went to the youth and he said,
brother,
would you allow
your sisters
to
It doesn't work for this generation. You have
to talk rational
to them. You have to convince them in
a rational way. Of course, the traditional
answer works for the people from back home,
but here you have to work a little
bit more to to understand the culture and
the mentality of the union.
Also,
when
imams
try to correct people
to correct them, and most people don't like
to be corrected, this is for a fact,
they don't say something positive before
they
they before they correct someone.
And this is something good that we learned
from the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam that
when he never wanted to correct someone,
So you have to say something nice about
people before you correct them and criticize them.
The last example I'm going to give,
and this is
one of the most beloved stories to my
heart
from the prophet,
and this will probably be 100
times for
some of you to hear this story, but
I love it so much. And most of
the people, they never heard of it before.
Hawad
ibn Jubayyal
al Ansar,
he was a youth
and he just accepted Islam in Madinah.
After the prophet sasalam, I created to Madinah.
So Hawad
accepted his plan and he was a youth
from very young.
So he went out of the prophet
to a camp
and in the break
he was walking
around and he saw beautiful women
chit chatting outside the camp.
Took the lady, passed her the light,
and he sat with the ladies and he
started to chitchat and he put all this
stuff with the ladies.
And all of a sudden, the Khurram SAW
Salam came
out
and all of a sudden the prophet came
out and he saw Hawat ibn Zubayr al
Sahni sitting with the ladies and cracking jokes
with them
and having a nice time with them.
So Hawat ibn Zubayr said,
I couldn't speak
because the prophet was so
dignified and honorable, and it was so charismatic.
I couldn't say anything. I was astonished.
So the prophet
of Allah,
I didn't know what to say.
The the only thing that came to my
mind at that point was
So the prophet
looked back and he saw me
and the prophet
slowed down so I can catch up with
him. I stopped, so the prophet
stopped and looked at me and said come
here come here come here.
I didn't I didn't know what to tell
him. Then he said
then he said,
the day after, I was in the masjid
praying Tahiyatul Masjid. I was standing in the
middle of the masjid.
The prophet
sitting next to me and knew he was
having for me,
I made the salah very long, I recited
the mocus sore all in the book
so he would get bored and leave.
So the prophet
came closer to me and said
I'm waiting for you
and I got all day,
so can't show me, please.
So he said
this is gonna go for
years.
So he said, Wallahi, I will tell the
prophet
something to put his heart in peace and
to leave me alone
forever.
So after he made salam al salam out,
he came to the prophet salam to say,
oh Prophet Allah,
the
and he made a dua for him. He
prayed for him.
Okay.
This is the problem. What is the solution?
In 2 minutes, I'll give you the solution,
then
I will leave.
The first one is education,
The second one is education. The number 3
is education.
We have to educate ourselves
about our Islamic beliefs, traditions,
and also values.
That's all we need. Education.
Number 2.
A Muslim is like Abib,
b e e.
Abib goes north of far.
Okay,
flies around. There are so many roses in
the park
or in the garden, whatever.
The
bee
knows where are the flowers that have the
best victor.
Okay?
So they go to the roses but they
don't go to the jungle.
And that's all you need to do. All
you need to do is pick up the
good stuff and leave alone the jungle.
We have our Islamic values, our Islamic traditions.
There are so many good things
in the Canadian culture, as I said,
democracy, freedom, respecting the law,
so on and so forth. You can get
good degrees here in,
medicine and engineering,
all that stuff, mechanical engineering.
And you can be a doctor, engineer, you
get a very high gain, you live a
wonderful life, there's nothing wrong with this.
But you also need to have our Islamic
values and our Islamic
presence.
To take responsibilities
in the house,
in the Masada, and to help with uplifting
and building their communities. Maybe this is a
topic for another lecture,
and I stop right there, And I ask
the most, Muhammad, to forgive our sins, to
accept our good deeds, and to give us
the best in this life
and the best in the next life.
Whatever I said good in this lecture is
only from Allah. Whatever bad things,
wrong things I said are from me
and from the shaytay and
from Google and Wikipedia.
So you have to forgive me. Thank you
very much.