Mustafa Khattab – Youth Matters
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
So today, InshaAllah,
we will talk about
a topic that is similar to what we
mentioned 2 weeks ago ago about aiming high
and thinking big
in the Muslim community. And today, we'll talk
about a similar topic,
about the problems
and the aspirations and the challenges facing our
youth in the Canadian society.
And, also, how can our youth be leaders
in the community?
Today,
I'm new in the Canadian society, so I
heard about the Remembrance Day.
And I thought, because I'm Galval, I'm new
in the community, so I thought remembrance day
is about remembering Allah. Remembrance. And
I thought Mashallah
gathers Allah, alhamdulillah,
then I realized I was wrong. But, anyway,
today, we'll talk about the youth.
So we begin our talk by an authentic
hadith from the prophet
narrated by Abdullah Abbas, and Allah be pleased
with him and his father. And the hadith
is authenticated by Imam al Ban. So the
prophet
says,
take advantage of 5 things before the coming
of 5 things.
Number 1. Take advantage of your youth
before you you become old.
And number 2. Take advantage of your health
before you become sick.
Number 3.
Take advantage of your wealth
before you become poor. And number 4, take
advantage of the free time you have before
you become busy. And number 5, take advantage
of
your life before you die. Because once you
die, it's over for you.
And we have said repeatedly
that life is very short.
Life is very short. So you have to
take advantage of these five things before it
is too late.
So for the youth to prosper and to
succeed in a community,
they have to have 3 components in their
character.
The first thing is the ability and the
desire to succeed.
You cannot help someone who is not willing
to help himself.
So the prophet, sahu,
was always a believer in specialization.
When the prophet, sahu, saw someone
who was good at something, he always
used them to do whatever they can do
best.
He didn't get people because they are his
buddies or because he liked them. No. Only
when people were qualified, he hired them to
do things for him.
So the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam rejected
a request by Abu Dhabi, his closest companion,
to be a leader or a governor. The
prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said, sorry. You
are not qualified.
The uncle of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam himself, Al Abbas, in the authentic hadith,
came to the prophet salawasalam, asking for a
leadership position,
and the prophet salawasalam said, sorry. I can't.
You are not qualified.
Then the prophet salawasalam hired
or got Osama bin Zayed, who was 17
years old, to leave the Muslim army, and
he got
another
Sahabi,
Jada Mu'al, to go to Yemen to be
a jad for them. And he was 20
years old.
And he didn't take out a Sahaba although
they were much older. Maybe he has more
tabla, but they were not qualified.
So this is the first thing.
The second thing that leads to success
in the Muslim youth is education.
You will never go anywhere without a good
education.
This is the rule of thumb. If
you want to succeed, you have to have
education.
Whether it's religious or secular, it doesn't matter.
You have to have good education
as long as it is halal from an
Islamic perspective, like studying sharia or studying medicine,
engineering. As long as it is something halal,
this is good.
How many rulers
and kings
have passed in the past 1000 of years,
and most of them who don't know them,
who don't recognize them, who don't know their
names.
But how many scholars
will remember their names? Like, Bukhari, Sha'afay, Ahmad,
Abu Hurayun, and all these great scholars.
Knowledge
gives them honor
and remembrance in this life
and Jannah in the next life.
Imam al Bukhari and Imam Sha'a'i, they were
born orphans.
Their fathers died while they were in the
wombs of their mothers all while they were
young,
And they were poor. But their mothers worked
hard for them to give them a good
education, and they became what they became.
The most
or the biggest and the most prestigious scholars
in the Muslim world of all time.
Imam al Shafi'i
assumed
Fatwa when he was 12 years old.
Imam Shafi'i was a Mufti when he was
12 years old, just like any little kid
in our community. 12 years old. He was
a Mufti.
And then the third condition is to have
an Islamic environment, a decent environment for the
youth.
But if you live in a corrupt society,
if you live in a non practicing family,
how do you expect the kids to be
practicing to be Kabir al Khajaz al Rumashah?
It doesn't happen. It doesn't work like this.
And we mentioned the example of Omar Ibn
Abdel Aziz radiAllahu anhu.
He became a hero of Islam, one of
the most righteous people of Islam.
When he was a little kid, his father,
who was a governor, a ruler,
appointed a teacher to teach him and bring
him up as a good Muslim.
And he was teaching him he was teaching
him salah and so on and so forth.
So one day, Omar Ibn Abdel Aziz was
was late for salatul jama'ah, and the t
shirt said, why do you come late?
So Omar Ibn Abdel Aziz said, it took
my servant a long time to comb my
hair.
I was late because of my hair. So
the teacher wrote a letter to Omar's father
saying that your son was late for salah
because of his hair. So the father said,
what?
Late because of his hair? Wallahi will shave
his hair off. He should have no hair.
He should become bold to come early to
the salah.
So this is the Muslim environment that these
scholars and these great heroes were brought up.
This is the way they were brought up.
So what prevents our youth from becoming leaders
in the community, from becoming successful ones?
Just look around
me in this Masjid or in this community.
The biggest segment of the population in the
Muslim community is between the age of 12
25.
This is the largest segment in the Muslim
community. Where are they?
About 1% of them come to the masjid.
What about the 99%
would never come to the masjid? Why?
Because there are no role models in the
in their community,
because they don't feel well enough in the
masjid, because they don't have a role model
in the masjid.
The
father, for example,
will warn his kids, if you smoke,
you will die. You will go to *.
And the the father himself is the heavy
smoker.
The mom is warning her kids, if you
lie or if you backbite, your neighbor will
go to *. And she bite she's a
bankbite,
day and night.
So there's no role model in the house.
How do we expect the kids to be
good kids?
In Amrit Khan in Madars.
Yeah. Ali, we live in a non Muslim
society, and they have their system and their
traditions and culture.
And we are Muslims.
Sometimes, we don't have problems with some of
the components of the culture here.
Freedom, democracy, and respect of the law. We
have no problem with these things. And there
are so many decent non Muslim Canadians. I'm
not saying they are bad. They are very
good people. I've met so many of them.
They're decent people, hardworking people, low abiding people.
But on the other hand, in this society,
there are so many social problems in the
community. Drinking,
homosexuality,
dating, drugs, and so on and so forth.
We have to keep our kids away from
these things.
And the first time they are introduced to
these things, boyfriend,
girlfriend, drugs, is when they go to the
school.
Peer influence.
They're friends.
And the society around them,
everybody's doing the same thing, so the Muslim
kid will look around and say, okay. Why
is my friend is smoking weed and I'm
not smoking weed?
Why does my friend have a girlfriend, and
I don't have 1? And so on and
so forth. They look around, and they imitate.
So the the youth are always criticized in
the masjid. Look how they
look look at the way they dress. One
brother came to me one time and he
said, look at look look at these guys,
man. They are coming to pry in these
soccer,
training suits. What is this? This is not
a club.
So I told him, brother,
this brother comes to the Masjid. There are
thousands
who who don't come.
And the other thing is, as long as
the dress is decent, it is acceptable Islamically.
So as long as the brother comes and
he or she is decent,
I don't care if they come in a
soccer training,
uniform, a hockey uniform,
or a karate
uniform, for that matter. It doesn't really matter.
Or a doctor comes in his uniform. It
doesn't
So
some of the masajid in the west, they
share the problem,
and they are the cause of the problem.
And as the prophet says
in the hadith,
the child is born
with the footla of Islam. Really to accept.
Anyone of us is born like a blank
page. Why?
It is the parents. It is the society.
It is the community
that makes them whatever they they want. They
make them Muslims. They make them Hindus, Christian,
junkies, drunkards,
smokers, whatever you whatever you name it. So
even the masajid share the problem. Most of
the masajid in North America and Europe,
the founders
and the people who founded and run these
masjid,
they still live with the back home mentality.
Okay?
And the youth, they feel they don't belong
to the masjid. We don't relate to this
building.
The masjid is run by all people most
of the time, and the boards in most
of these masjid are run by all people.
There's no, you know
the youth are not represented.
There are no programs for the youth in
most of these masjid. Even the imams,
they don't talk to the youth. They only
talk to old people, people who only speak
Arabic. Most of the imams, they don't speak
English,
so they don't relate to the young ones.
Even when they talk to the youth, they
don't understand their culture.
Then Al Aqlehi will tell him, Daghtajla Usboob
Jadeep is a fearhatatahiram
al Aqlehi shabel.
So one imam called me 2, 3 years
ago that a father came to the Masjid
with his son. Big problems.
He
said that his son, his Muslim son, has
a non Muslim girlfriend. So
what can we do? Big problem.
So the father came to the youth and
said and he mentioned the hadith of the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam that the youth
came to the prophet and said, allow me
to commit adultery.
So the Prophet
said, would you accept this for your sister,
your mother,
your daughter in the future?
So the youth said no. So the Prophet
said, and people don't like this for their
daughters and mothers and sisters.
So the American Sheikh came to the youth
and said,
is it okay for your sister to have
a boyfriend?
So the youth says,
if she wants to,
I don't have a problem with it. If
she lies, yeah. Fine with me.
So the traditional answers that we grew up
with don't work for the youth here. It's
a different mentality. It's a you need a
different approach and different attitude
to solve all these
problems.
In conclusion, what is the role of the
youth in the Muslim community, and how can
they have Himma in the Muslim community?
Number 1, we have to give them this
feeling
that they can be leaders if they are
qualified
and if they have the training and if
they have the education.
We should give them assignments in the house.
We make them feel the value of the
youth,
and we make them feel
the ownership. They own the masjid, and they
own the house, and they own and they
are part of the community.
Whether we like it or not,
the 3 year old kid or 5 or
7 year old kid who is sitting next
to you in this masjid,
one day will be the leader of this
community,
will be the probably the president of this
country or the prime minister, We'll be the
doctor and the engineer and the iman. Whether
we like it or not.
This is the way how things work.
One day, all of us, we were kids,
and now look at us. We're grown ups,
and we are the leaders in the community.
So we have to give them leadership positions.
We have to give them the right guidance
and the right indication, and we have to
help them and give them value and Himba
in this society. We ask Allah
to forgive our sins and to our sins
our deeds.