Nouman Ali Khan – Giving Dawah
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
In this folder in the second half an infection, he will come, what are the
weather today I do believe that the accent is coming home. But who
knows what you know who knows why when I
see somebody where Sydney ugly
coding
along with it
in the United States,
and how
to delivering and sharing that message.
But I want to begin with three at least major obstacles that lie between us and sharing this message, this universal message of submission to a lot. And this universal message that
is the last of the messenger is not that we reject any of them, we accept all of them, but we accept him as the final one. And the other the final revelation, the final installment, the final testament century humanity that applies to all human beings, this is something we have to share with all humanity. And if we live in the United States, we have to share it with people that live in the United States. But there are some obstacles in our path.
One of those obstacles that you guys talk about all the time even, and it is how we are portrayed in the media, how Islam is talked about as something evil, how it's a threat, how your Muslim neighbor might be crazy how they have actual footage of people picketing against Muslim children going to public school in some parts of this country, because I don't want my child sitting next to all the Muslims, right? Because they're scared. Why are these people so scared of Islam, because Islam is portrayed as something evil, something scary, something alien might as well be from another planet. It's not far off how its presented. And of course, what is used to make Islam Indian, let's look at
some of the arguments that are used in popular discourse to make Islam seem like such a strange thing. One of the first thing that's been presented, especially in the bible belt in this country, that Islam is very much against the principles of Christianity, right? This is an evil religion in practice, these people practice evil things, and our you know, system of morals and values, they have nothing on them, which in and of itself is a very horrible claim. You see, if you've ever made that one to a Christian, you will know that you can if you make to them that was for them on the front of morality, that we are against shamelessness we are against, you know, abuse, we're against
this, and then they'll agree with you 100%. Our major problem with their theology is actually not what their morality is within theology with their belief system. So if you talk to him about Jesus, he'll run out of arguments. And then they'll have to go to something else. So this is Islam itself is a myth, and much of the things that are considered, you know, so controversial, like the women having to cover they'll have entire documentaries made on the male of the woman, right? Does the Old Testament not talk about living baby? You know, that's almost the Jewish text even says if you if a woman so much it shows her Pinky, the short finger, then this is a testament to her exposing her
entire body. That's how shameless it is. That's the sonic x but nobody turns the Jewish tradition and says, different barbaric, how backwards.
There are even as far as today on the new car. And there was a commentator, you know, supposedly neutral commentator even say, How are we supposed to deal with these people in business, when we have the perception that they oppress their women, and they, you know, these days, the husbands, they oppress their wives, and that's just part of their religion.
You know, and we're living in times where, by the way, the abuse of women is a reality of the world. It's a reality in the world, not only in the Muslim world in general also, but you have societies even in the world today, like the elite of Japanese culture, for example, when the wife doesn't eat food, unless the husband is finished eating much he has to stand behind him on his eating food is the same guy when he's when he's done cheese select overs as part of Japanese culture, even today. Nobody comments on that. And by the way, this was asked by
somebody can do
what if I knew Is it okay for my wife to wait for me after I finish eating that she eats and he said that he can be very professional developer. This is the
After tiredness, we will do this. Right We protect the rights of women.
So this is the first essential problem, popular discourse, and how it's been framed, how we've been made to look like something alien and something apart. And this is actually a part of selective amnesia. You know, we look at Islamic world history, the two civilizations are very much connected. And this idea of, you know, this clash between two civilizations, they have nothing in common whatsoever. This is absolute nonsense. Some of the greatest universities of the Christian and Jewish tradition were actually established in the Muslim world under listen rule. We don't know this, because we don't know that part of history. We only know the part of history that the radio
commentator, or the newscaster wants to tell us, the part that will inflict or incite conflict. That's the part that they want to highlight. So this is the first part problem, popular discourse. How do we engage in that discourse? Here's the second problem. The second problem is our ignorance, the ignorance of
you know, I was listening to a Baptist minister on the radio, who's talking to other, you know, Baptists, he's teaching them how to preach to Muslims. He's teaching them how to preach to us. If you have a Muslim coworker, if you have a Muslim business partner at the embassy student, excetera, etc. How do you bring them to Christianity is training the people on the radio.
And they have this idea for an expert, a Christian for an expert on the radio going off explaining how they have to deal with Muslims what they consider shakin calm, and you know, all these terminologies.
And he's talking about sounds like he knows what he's talking about. In reality, you use misquoting misusing
completely off from the preparation beforehand. But you know what the sad thing is, the vast majority of Muslims, if they are listening to this guy, they will know that they've actually,
what's the biggest weapon some of these people have? is, you know, what is causing confusion and spreading?
It is the ignorance of the Muslims themselves. We don't even know what to tell somebody else.
It's fair question to ask. If something's being misrepresented about the sun, these ministers they know more places to pose to you than you perceive. And that's a serious problem. We don't know even what we stand for what our civilization is what our sacred texts. So this is a second problem. The first problem is popular discourse. The second problem is our own ignorance. But the third problem is a real problem. These two are minor issues, these can be solved, education can be removed through our ignorance can be removed from education possible, right? popular discourse can be changed once we start engaging our tracks, it can be changed. But the real problem, the real problem is the
behavior of
the behavior. That is the you the biggest obstacle to getting the message. Anybody else? It's the biggest. Let me tell you why.
You know how you've ever heard the expression actions speak louder than words? Right? So if somebody comes up to
you, people are impressed with you people read your religion teaches your password. And no, it doesn't actually protects the rights of women. Look at these. Look at these. Look at the practice of the messengers of Allah. How can you tell me that in a society where every two and a half minutes a * takes place? You're telling us that we've abused the rights of women look at this incredible practice and honoring of women in society and how it completely transformed how the Arabs work. And you know, the second point is they look across the world, how many cases of spousal abuse, how many cases how many cases of spousal abuse in this country, how many cases of spousal abuse husbands or
wives Muslims in urban,
how many cases in us,
we ourselves, we ourselves are the ultimate anti our army.
We've protected our sacred texts calls for honesty, dealing in dealing with people with truth, who code and solidity so to speak, straightforward, speak, you know, speak in an upright fashion. And yet, one of the worst business decisions you can make nowadays is become a business partner with another Muslim
cousins, you know, you're gonna get basically you're gonna get,
you know, you know what's gonna happen, and this is popular enough to know what you're gonna get, you know, they're gonna swindle you, they're gonna undercut you, and they're gonna look all religious on the outside of you, you know, basically.
That's the popular question, but how did it get to that point?
So our texts or products are so beautiful, and our behavior is so ugly. It's so ugly. But what do people see people don't see.
What do they see? They see us, they see our behavior, and when they see us, they're not going to care about what they said they probably got.
So they blame our religion based on
Our shortcomings. And you know what, as much as we complain about that, as much as we can say, No, don't judge Muslim, the judge, in the end, in the end until Muslims change their behavior, until we represent what our book says, until then we can't really spread this message. We cannot really say this session. Well, what do I know brothers that took Shahada, they accepted Islam by looking at the sun in the public library. But when they came to the worship, they faced a lot and said, thanks a lot, I did not need these people first, thanks a lot, I learned a song first. Because if I met these people, first, I wouldn't even learned about this one. I would never even have considered, how big
they are, how they look at you, the way they behave towards the way they fight with each other in the household.
These kinds of things we are turning people away from, from our own behavior from our condition. So here's the thing, the vast majority, the vast majority of Muslims, they're not doing that, well. They're not doing there is some, reward them and bless their efforts and put power in their efforts and their efforts to spread the message of Islam within themselves and even beyond that. But their work is being multiplied by zero by all the lack of practice, and the corruption of the rest of the Muslims. Because whenever they speak, the actions of the rest of the Muslims speak louder than their words, those actions are louder than the words of Jesus, we're undoing our own methods for undoing
our own. This is serious. And this is the problem we have to resolve. You know, I want to give you your personal buzz about the importance of that one before. But I want to approach it from a different angle,
the long term consequences of not being a nation of doubt, when we are not a nation of spreading and inviting people to the message of Islam, in speech and in practice, if we are not those people, what are the consequences? What are the consequences of that, of course, the first consequence is that we become the people that might fall under the curse of the law.
We sat down from the island.
Those are the people that don't even have to look at some data and we can be clear to people, those are the people that have
the biggest consequence of evolution of our in our speech and interaction, right, that's the first consequence, but there are others.
A lot of them just wiped out by going forward. A lot of people standing in the back of us make space
for the people around.
The consequences of this will be on
the next slide. But there are consequences in this.
In this slide.
What we learned
a lot as far as dealing with all the works,
Muslims,
of believers will will face trials, they will face troubles, it's never going to be easy, it's always going to be trial. And these trials are there to guarantee agenda. Impressive and you know, a lot of sense in the very beginning. And by the way, is to
learn the ethics of Dharma and the most important principles of value. One of the best places to learn about Dharma in the Quran, in the beginning of life.
People assume they're not going to be tested.
People just assume they just have to become the same and just come to a salon and just go and that's it.
We thoroughly tested those who came before them.
These IR came down on some of your loved ones and paid a price for making our system not just accepting Islam, calling people to expand the place they took this Companion of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam. They took this companion, they put him on burning coals until his back the skin on his back melted in his pee a lot. And in this horrid state, he came to the Prophet
said, if we are the people of truth, why is this happening to us? Why do we how can we deserve this? We are the people of the truth. And I'm not I'm the messenger told him you are rushing. There are people that came before you that were soldered or buried into the ground alive because of what because of the hyperbola. So you're rushing to judgment, don't rush and then the IRS came down you think you're just going to get another slide back
Imagine what he went through. And I said, That's not even that you haven't really paid yet. We have to be mentally prepared for trials. When we engage in the work of that, well, we have to be mentally prepared for.
Now, in this summer, we'll give this passage about how to make our own education and struggle. Then he mentioned a number of profits. I mentioned the immediate profits that are mentioned by that, immediately after this passage that was talking about new ideas.
And immediately after that, we started talking about
what's the significance of first talking about that rather than talking about new
immediately after that, you see no hair and ceramic, you know, nothing else we know. It's relentless. It's non stop. It is consistent, untiring unflinching, calling to Assam for 950 years continuous. So this what is it teaching us fundamentally, that this work is not something that can be done over a month or a year or seminar?
constant effort, it has to be a constant work of this, the constancy of data is alluded to.
And by the way, if you want to give an adjective to the producer, you will have to say fearless,
fearless, so this constant,
and this fearless
no matter what the consequences, he's not going to let go.
He's not going to let go, or therefore should not be based on fear, or dogma should not be based on anger. And it should not be based on fear. It should be neutral, like the Dharma, calm, collected, darwaza, Grandma,
he has the ability to talk to even some of the worst human beings. And
it's just in logical discourse, intellectual discourse, he's able to do that. So we have to learn from these things. And what I wanted to conclude with
is just some basic food for thought that all of us need to take a little more seriously. If we are to engage in this work, if we are serious about taking the work of Dharma forward in this country, and you know, at the level of a community, and even as individuals, sometimes, when you think about the problems of the Muslims, those problems are so big, that you get overwhelmed. And when you get overwhelmed, you say, oh, man, there's no such thing. Man, we got so many problems.
Right? That's usually on average. But sometimes this becomes casual entertaining conversation over dinner, man, because so many problems, our coolers are so corrupt, and pg&e says they said that in the other we talk, we make a list of all the problems we have. It's like our, you know, the novices and Alcoholics Anonymous and their, you know, their therapy session, we have giant, right? You sit over time we discuss the problems of Muslims, and we don't do nothing about right, we say it's too big a problem for us to fix. Now, how do we change that attitude? First of all, a lot, does not demand from me for you to change the whole world? What is the demand from us? To change ourselves?
That's what he demands from us in the world.
To see, but no, it is no doubt that allows us to change what is afflicting the nation? Until they change what is in their own selves? Right? And even be in the advocacy within the hotel. at the individual level. What am I doing wrong? How am I misrepresenting Islam in the way I deal with my wife, with my neighbor, with my co workers with the people that drive by me on the highway? How am I misrepresenting some vehicles? You can change that much, instead of complaining about yourself? Start with that. The second thing I said, you know, the third, the biggest problem was our behavior. So let's start changing our behavior. Right. The second problem about that was our ignorance. So we
need to address that too. We need to become students have been wanting to start asking more and more questions, we need to start to learn more and more and more, we need to connect with people that know better than we do. So we can call them or email them or visit them and learn from them. If it's not necessarily that you join, or you become a candidate, or a movie, etc, to represent the basics of the song, but it is important that you're connected with somebody who has knowledge. If you if you at least have some contact with somebody who has knowledge, you can you can something comes up you can ask them you can learn about it, right? I prefer my advice would be to have someone like
that who's actually a living person, not someone behind the screen with a screen name, and you have no idea what you're getting, what knowledge you're getting online, right, it may or may not be valid. So if you have a person like you know, the demands of our community, it's a wonderful resource for them. We need to put them to work. We need to be going to them and asking them these sorts of questions. This is our second issue.
The first concern you have is this idea of Muslims being portrayed in the West. We need to be a little bit more a little stronger at the local level. Don't worry about what's happening in the United States.
about what's happening in your town, we should have the sisters should have a women's program at the Public Library. Women, you know, women in Islam are the most controversial topic and invite
the community and let the Muslim women speak to women about this, you know, what they stand for? And how much confidence they have. You know what that girl you may or may not have heard that girl who ran away from her house in Columbus, Ohio, she converted to Christianity, and she accused her father of trying to kill her and all of that was all a lie. That's all a lie is bogus. You know, and there weren't even a religious family. She was a cheerleader before she ran away. So once again, you could have killed her for that. Right? If anything, if he's crazy. But he didn't. He didn't say anything. So this is all bogus, that that's all bogus. But anyway, you know what the best people are to
respond to that? Why the
president around, the best people respond for Muslim teenage girls themselves? Why don't they speak write an article for the local paper and say, what do you what are you guys talking about? We have it better than anybody else. Right? We have to speak up, we have to represent this. We have to stand up and say this, you can't say this about us. This is not who we are. And you know, we instead of constantly running after all the applications they make against us and say no, we're not this, we don't oppress women, we don't make you know, we don't want to kill everyone. We're not, we're not strapping any explosives, when we go to the mall, etc, etc. Instead of constantly answering their
allegations, and constantly telling people what Islam is not. We need to start telling people what Islam is.
They're constantly making us tell them what Islam is not.
But this will not stop until we tell people what Islam is. We need to tell them. And instead of them criticizing us, if you learn something from the devil of the prophets, they look at the greatest evils of their society and they criticize those evils. They don't just talk about the man in the mirror and just just ignore, they go beyond that to look at you. People are committing shamelessness. He goes after their shameless behavior
goes after the corrupt business practices of his people, if there is a corruption in the society, who's supposed to stand for it.
So what we need to be recognized that if we were really doing that, but you know, people will see us people will see as these people don't care what happens to them, they stand up for justice, anybody who's oppressed, the Muslim, stand up, stand up for them. They're not happy for their own selves, they are a lobby for the people for justice, for equal rights. And whenever there's a violation, some some, you know, somebody's integrity is being questioned somebody's rights. The Muslim stands up. And this is our messengers.
leave you with one example just to think about how we need to rethink how we think governing this country. Just to repeat it. You know, there was a, I told you,
before this, you even when you're little you heard the story of a woman, right, and his wife, and his child, how they were executed, basically, for saying that, when the messenger saw this happen in front of his own eyes.
What did he say? Did he have a you know, was there any sort of a protest, any picket fence, any yelling and screaming stuff, the killing of the Muslims, and he's standing in front of the United Nations and protesting and screaming and nothing? What did he say to them, he said, he
doesn't have your places he told them to have. When you are on this path, instead of complaining about the troubles that come to you, you have to have patience. But in the same error, emotionally, a non Muslim came to the profits of a woman. And he told them that Japan has taken my money, and he won't give it back. He didn't tell him.
He didn't tell the Muslim he said
to the dragon by the hand took him down.
So we are putting ourselves in sacrifice for the justice to be served for others, for ourselves or for others, is why less does
not mean anything as lean as you are the best submissions derive not from the people, but for the people. Unless you are the best patient chosen not from the people. But for the people. We are here to serve what religion has to offer as a service to humanity. I'm lucky enough to remove the shackles of oppression that are oppressing the people around us. Our attitude needs to change we have to become a little more confident. We have to stop being so defensive on this.
Let's start learning what we are and sharing what we are with our friends and neighbors first, and again, I reiterate and I'm done. None of this sharing of Islam will be of any benefit to anyone until we see a change in
Until we see a change in our attitude alaris is capable of changing our behavior to make us better Muslims because it was a blessing
to keep us away from the evil things that we have left before this was started and make them make us available for the rest of our lives and make us truly capable of go by to him. We love Vegas this week so much that stands up for the message of that and a lot of what we allow you to make us are children or families verse, verse, very knowledgeable in the book of Allah and His messenger and make them capable with confidence of sharing this message with friends and neighbors a life
benefit team
will help me Meanwhile, he was
a soldier
in the
army he was the schema a lot more suddenly I don't have many
cameras today to highlight why that was
what
I got the last question it
or not