Nouman Ali Khan – Breaking Free from Mental Enslavement
AI: Summary ©
The importance of reviewing the seven leagues of the Bible to determine if one is a winner or victim is highlighted, as well as the use of the symbol of freedom to create a image of the Empire and the leagues of the Bible to celebrate the freedom of speech and religion. The history and cultural differences between the Middle East and Africa are discussed, including the success of the British colonization of India and the use of military means to achieve goals. The importance of living in a democratic society and self respecting is emphasized, along with the promise of empowerment for the world and the importance of seeing the truth.AI: Transcript ©
They were supposed to be the enemy
and you should hate everything about your enemy,
but the enemy was very as teaching you
that if you speak my language, you will
be successful.
If you dress like me, you will be
more successful. If you eat like me, you
will be more successful.
If you talk like me, if you act
like me, if you look like me, if
you pretend that you are me,
even though you're brown,
if you pretend that you're white,
you're gonna look really you're gonna get really
successful.
Inshallah, in,
this brief talk before the Khutbah, I will
share with you some reflections and some lessons
from the 61st ayah of Surat Al Baqarah.
And as I continue to talk about this
ayah, I think anybody who
thinks about this ayah deeply will understand
why it's important for us to review ayaat
like these at a time like this.
Allah Azzawajal is,
placing this ayah in a in a certain
context.
Badu Israel
have escaped
Firaun.
They got away from Firaun.
And for many, many generations,
they were
living under the rule of Firaoun.
So for a long time, they've lived as
an occupied people
with a dominant force that that, you know,
rules over them and treats them like slaves
and keeps them like an like an underclass.
Right?
Now the thing is there's a strange relationship
between the oppressor and the oppressed.
In the history of the world, you have
nations that get dominated by other nations. That
has happened
throughout history.
The Japanese did that to the Chinese, for
example. The British did that to many parts
of the world. The Dutch did it in
Indonesia, etcetera, etcetera.
And when these these invaders,
colonizers, rulers, whenever they come somewhere,
after they win, the general public, not the
not the people who are fighting them, but
the general public,
the millions and millions of people that were
living,
their life at first doesn't seem like it
changed that much. So if somebody was a
farmer before the Romans took over,
somebody's a farmer after the Romans took over.
The taxes go in a different direction, but
their life really didn't change all that much
other than the war.
The same way
when in in especially particularly the Roman empire,
the the the Mongols, other
warring nations that expanded their territory all over
the world. One of the ways they did
that is they didn't change too much of
what was going on.
You keep your system.
You keep doing farming the way you do.
You keep the market the way you do.
Just the money needs to come this way
now. That's all. Right? So for the general
public, at the economic level at least,
didn't seem like there was too much of
a difference,
but it was also important
for the people that took over
to let the public know there's a new
boss in town.
Not just that the money should quietly flow
somewhere else,
but there has to be an assertion of
dominance. You The public has to recognize
that they live under the power of a
mighty empire of a mighty ruler etcetera. Right?
And the way they do that is not
just by showing them military force.
That's too expensive.
The military is used on the battlefield.
The military is used in
espionage
and collecting intelligence but the military, when you
try to use the military
to control the population,
the population is too big.
And that's not the job of the military.
So they have to use other weapons
and I'm gonna call them weapons.
The Americans most recently called it the hearts
and minds campaign.
That's what they called it. So you don't
need guns and bombs.
What you need is entertainment.
What you need is sports.
What you need is culture,
concerts.
What you need and the Romans did this.
The Mongols. The all these empires did this.
They'll put on these big shows. You'll have
a national celebration day etcetera.
You have to make the people feel like
their loyalty to the empire is part of
being a citizen.
And these people won because they deserve to
win.
It's a good thing they won. If they
didn't win, we would never have advanced as
an empire. So you start even though they
don't see you
as one of them,
They want you to see them
as family.
They'll never look at you as family
but, they want you to see them as
family.
And so, they will do this by you
know, the the flags and the parades and
shows and songs and you know, propaganda machinery
basically. They'll create that and they created that
even in the time of Firaun.
In fact, if you study the history of
the pharaohs,
this is important because the Quran brings up
Firaoun quite a bit. Right?
Firaoun, if you if you know anything about
the ancient Egyptian empire, they built a lot
of very strange,
but very
daunting powerful monuments like the sphinx, and the
pyramids, and the obelisks, and all these strange
architectural
structures that even now, people go on tourist
sites and they visit these places. And a
lot of these places were built,
so if if there were people traveling by
sea,
and they would pass by or or river,
they could see on the banks of the
river. Oh, these people are You don't wanna
mess with these people. Look at what they
built.
It was a means of intimidation.
Right?
And this is actually, you know,
in the in the Quran Allah Azzawaju describes
even previous nations like the nation of Hud
alaihis salam.
They used to do this too, to carve
idols and carve massive monuments
for no other purpose but to create an
image and impression.
Right?
And so, it's a symbol of something. You
know, when the United States The rebels in
the United States were fighting the British empire,
The French wanted to because the French hate
the British,
so just to stick it to the English
some more, they sent them the, you know,
Lady Liberty.
A symbol of the union between France and
France and America. And what does Lady Liberty
represent? Freedom.
Freedom of speech. Freedom of religion, freedom of
expression, freedom of hue to be human as
you wish to be except in France that
celebrates that freedom. You can't wear a hijab
and get a job.
You can't have Adi Muhammad and get, you
know, put your resume and you're not gonna
get a call back. The same guy, you
know, Algerian guy, light haired, light light skinned,
his name was Abdul Karim. He applies for
a job, can't get it, changes his name,
you know. You know, Jacques
Francois and he sends it in and he
gets a call right away.
Freedom.
But it's just a symbol. It's supposed to
show people this is what we represent.
This is what we celebrate.
Right? So it's done by means of a
flag and all these other things. Now, what
happens to most of the public? Most of
the public,
what these empires did is they controlled the
way these pim people think about the world.
They they wanted your worldview if you lived
in that time, they wanted your worldview to
be shaped by them. They want you to
see the world the way they want you
to see it.
And that was one of their most powerful
weapons.
The Israelites
were slaves
to the empire.
They were slaves to Egypt.
And Musa alaihis salam helped them break away
from that slavery and now they were free.
They were in Sinah. They were in the
desert.
The military has drowned.
The Egyptian army is gone. Now they're free.
But they're not free
because the real occupation was not the military
occupation.
The real occupation was the psychological occupation.
They escaped physically
but they didn't escape mentally.
They didn't escape mentally. So now they're free.
Now, I want you to give I wanna
give you an analogy.
If somebody was in jail,
falsely accused, they got thrown in jail.
And after 20 years of being in jail,
they got out.
When they got out,
now they have they can see the sun
again.
They can eat normal food again. They can
make friends again. Right?
Will they ever want to wear the jail
uniform?
I'm in the mood. I miss those clothes.
Are you gonna do that?
You going to say, man the way they
made that that mush that they used to
give us for lunch. I want I want
I miss that mush, man.
I don't wanna eat chicken.
I don't wanna eat beef. I don't wanna
have a barbecue. I want that old pot,
that dirty pot,
and I wanna sit in a dark place
where there's rats running around because I I
miss that, man. That was the life.
Nobody would do that.
Nobody will do that. In fact, even if
they saw a rat or they saw a
pot that looked like the pot from the
from the time of jail, they might get
triggered. That memory might come back and they
might start remembering and they might even start
crying
that they remember that. The next time you
see a police officer, they might have a
panic inside their heart. I've lived through this.
You know?
They can't even drive by the old place
where they used to be in prison.
It reminds them of a terrible episode in
their life they would rather forget.
That is
someone who got free and now wants to
taste freedom. They wanna taste freedom.
Musa alaihi wasalam comes with them to the
desert.
It's a desert. It's not a garden.
You don't have a lot of food options.
You don't have a lot of weather, shade
options. So Allah provided the shade as you
might
know. Right?
And then
Right? So Allah sent them and so the
food is taken care
of. The food So what you need to
survive,
water which is the 12 springs,
The 12 springs have been given.
Proteins have been given. You know, is coming.
The bird is coming. You can kill the
bird. You can get the the flesh of
that bird. Your protein intake, your fat intake
is covered.
Is the wheat that they're going to grow.
So their protein, their their their carbs are
covered, taken care of. It's a full nutritional
plan. They can survive perfectly well and be
hydrated
now with freedom.
And these people that were free physically
were still enslaved mentally
and they come to Musa alaihis salaam in
a ayah number 61
and they say, waifqulto
Allah says, and you people said to Musa,
at the time when you said,
We can't just keep eating one kind of
food. We don't have the patience
to keep eating the same food over and
over again.
What's for lunch? And
What's for dinner?
And
Same thing over and over again. I can't
do this anymore.
Come on.
Let's have some variety.
So they turned to Musa alayhis salaam and
in this part of this complaint,
they said,
So why don't you go make dua to
your rabb?
He should bring out some other variety of
vegetables for us, lentils
in order to speak a dal,
piaz,
you know, some some
some turkari should be there, some
some masala should be this is bland food.
Can't keep eating this stuff. Can we place
a better order with Allah?
That's what they're asking. Now why is this
significant? Why did Allah mention all these names
of these vegetables? Interestingly,
these were popular vegetables in Egypt.
And they saw their masters eating this food
all the time.
And they probably got some leftovers themselves.
So you know what? I was giving you
the analogy. They miss prison food.
Right? Now you got free but your brain
is still
in the jail cell and you're asking for
the food you used to enjoy in the
jail cell, and you're telling your prophet, yeah,
this freedom is nice but can we go
back to jail food?
Can we go have Can we have that
again?
And Musa alaihis salam did something remarkable here.
By the way, it's not just the food.
It's not just the food. We used to
live under one of the greatest, mightiest empires
on earth.
Every other nation in the world was scared
of Firaoun. We had Irani citizenship.
We had an Egyptian passport.
We had the citizen we had the, you
know, the the green card. We had it
all.
And we gave all of that up, and
now we're in the desert
eating this bird and this bread.
This is this is freedom. This is what
you brought us to. We went from the
number one nation in the world
and you want us to live like this.
You see, they were not the number one
nation in the world. They were slaves of
the number one nation in the world. But
in their head, we're number 1, baby.
Because they the the the slave owner watched
us make you think that you're part of
the empire.
Even though you're just you're just the insect
that they step on.
You're just the insect that they step on.
That's that's all you are,
you know.
You'll have people that are,
you know, in American politics for example, the
people that are crazy about Donald Trump. They're
crazy about him.
Christians that are more interested in Trump than
Jesus.
I've seen
it. And these people can barely pay their
electricity bill.
They're barely getting by. But if Trump comes
around, yeah, we love you. And he goes,
I love you guys too. I love He
doesn't love any of you.
But he's very successful in making you believe
that you need to love him.
He's very successful. His furan's tactic, it's already
there. So there, they were enslaved, they come
out and they want the same old thing.
They want what the colonizer, what the owner,
what the map, what the former master gave
them. And Musa alaihis salam said, aybitu misran.
Now, the word misran is really something.
Mislan in the Arabic language is
countryside.
You could say badadan
arban.
Right? You could say wadian. You could say
any word and this would work but Allah
chose the word misran
with a a
you can hear the noon at the end.
Misran.
But the word for Egypt in Arabic is
misra.
Misra without the telmid. It's So
these two words are very close to each
other but they don't mean the same thing.
If you say misra or misru, it's Egypt.
If you say misrun
or misran, it's countryside.
But the word is very close.
It's as if Musa alaihis salam is saying
you want to go back down into another
Egypt.
You wanna go to a new place but
actually you want Egypt all over again.
Let me tell you something interesting about where
I come from.
I'm originally from Pakistan. I love Pakistan.
I love that entire region actually.
I love the history of that region.
A book for especially the the university students
that are sitting here and high school students
that are sitting here. The boys and the
girls.
I really want you to read this book
especially if you come from South Asia. If
you come from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan,
even Sri Lanka, other parts of that region.
I want you to read this book. It's
called Islam and the English enlightenment.
Islam and the English enlightenment. I really want
you to read it for yourself.
But I want you to just let's step
away from that for a moment.
The British colonized India.
They ruled over the British the the the
Hindus, the Sikhs, the Muslims
for some
time. The Indians tried to fight back. The
Muslims particularly tried to fight back.
Didn't didn't work for a long time.
They were supposed to be the enemy
and you should hate everything about your enemy,
but the enemy was very successful as teaching
you that if you speak my language, you
will be successful.
If you dress like me, you will be
more successful.
If you eat like me, you will be
more successful.
If you talk like me, if you act
like me, if you look like me, if
you pretend that you are me,
even though you're brown,
if you pretend that you're white,
you're gonna look really you're gonna get really
successful.
Because the the British are a very small
nation if you didn't know.
I've been to England many times and you
can drive across the country in a few
hours.
And every time I drive, most of it
is farmland.
One town, farmland. One town, farmland. And I
look at it as you Allah, these people
and the entire planet,
how did they
What what in the How how in the
world did that happen?
And if you study English history, they were
ready to kill each other. Their kings were
ready to kill each other.
And they go from there at a time
when their entire military
wasn't even 60, 70,000. If you wanna exaggerate
it, 200,000. Their entire military and the Bulwark
military was in the millions.
Between 26,000,000
it fluctuated.
How?
How did this happen?
It didn't happen militarily.
Something else was going on.
And we need to understand
how
* works. Yes. It works by military means,
but there are other mechanisms, other weapons that
are used
And in those weapons, even when people break
free from the British,
even when people fight in Algeria. They fight
and kill
That they they get killed to get the
French out of their land.
They can get the French out,
but there's a French that stays inside.
And then get the British out, but there's
a British that stays inside.
And when it resides inside, now you can
go to a country like
like Pakistan,
which I love.
And Pakistan has a remarkable heritage of many
many languages.
Many of those languages are dying.
Right?
And if you go to a restaurant and
you speak in Urdu,
then the waiter might look at you like,
But if you said the same exact thing
in english on top of that if you
say it in an american accent, please sir,
this way sir.
You could conduct the experiment. You could walk
into I could walk into the same restaurant
with a suit on, speak in English,
different I could go back out,
change additional arkamese
and then come back in and speak in
Urdu.
Completely different trade. And this is not in
America.
The mistreat is not in America. It's not
happening in Canada. It's not happening in England.
This is happening in the Muslim world. And
it's not just Pakistan. It's happening in India,
Bangladesh,
Indonesia,
Malaysia. It's happening in in in North Africa,
all over the Muslim world. You know what
it is?
We freed ourselves.
We did.
But did we?
Did we free ourselves?
It's as if we wanted another
missile.
We wanted another missile. And the new one,
for the new generation now, they're like, I
was born in Canada. What are you talking
about? I can't relate to any of this.
Yeah.
We talked to you for a second. You
know who your colonizer is? Brand names.
Your TV your your your loyalty to
your entertainment accounts,
your worship of your sports teams.
This is how your new master keeps you
busy.
It keeps you busy with the new
car that came out, the new phone release
that came out that has a camera,
which is exactly the same as the last
camera,
But for you, your life is incomplete if
you don't have the newest one.
You have to have it.
You have to show it.
You will be proud
of democracy. Living in a democracy
that is so busy destroying democracies all over
the world.
But you're so proud of democracy.
And they'll, you know, at least we have
rights, at least we have this and then
that facade will start breaking.
So what I'm trying to tell you by
means of this ayah
is that Musa alaihi salaam gave them a
warning.
If this is what you want,
you wanna live as slaves again.
If not physically then mentally,
go ahead.
Go into another Egypt. This time, it's not
a firaun that has to rule you. Firaun
is already in your head and you are
colonizing yourselves
on autopilot.
I mean the best kind of slave is
a slave you don't even have to build
a prison, save money.
The slave who's a slave while he thinks
he's free.
The owner doesn't even have to spend any
money. This is the easiest way.
This is
great. You know, there used to be a
time before the banking systems that developed and
the taxation systems that developed that the kings
used to send the forces and the forces
used to come and collect the money from
every house and
it got smarter. And I'm like this is
too much. I've got to pay this the
soldier. I gotta pay the horse. I gotta
pay the cart. I gotta pay the travel
expense. Then they gotta collect the money. I
lose a lot of money this way. Let's
make an automated billing system so so when
people are riding down the highway, the toll
will rob them and they won't even know
and they'll feel like they're free. The road
is so nice.
The view is so nice. They'll be smiling
while being robbed.
They'll be smiling while they're, you know, they'll
pay taxes on their income, then they'll pay
taxes when they buy a a, you know,
bottle of milk,
then they'll pay taxes when they're recycling that
bottle of milk, then they'll pay taxes when
they're buy the car and park the car
and emissions from the car.
We'll just keep taking their money back and
they'll be smiling. You'll be like, this is
so great.
This is this is a much better slavery
system than even Firaun.
Would have been proud.
This is this is a real upgrade.
And if you'd allow this, if you don't
break free from at least mentally being
owned,
if you don't free yourself, what is the
big and I I don't wanna prolong this
discussion. I have 4 minutes. I'll just give
you one thing. Allah says, what punishment? What
is the consequence of this?
It's easy. There's a there's a there's a
law in the Quran. There's multiple laws in
the Quran. You guys understand the law of
gravity,
Right? You understand laws of physics. You understand
laws of combustion.
You understand
laws of chemistry.
Right? You understand laws of physiology. If you're
gonna eat certain things that are poisonous to
the human body, your body will be affected.
There are laws that govern that. There are
there are rules in place. Allah put rules
in place. You can't take stick your fire
into your hand into a fire. There are
rules of combustion.
Right?
They're going There's going to be a cause
and there's going to be an effect. Just
like that in the Quran, Allah gives us
another kind of cause and effect that if
Allah did not teach us, we would never
know. Physics you can learn.
Combustion you can learn.
You know, anatomy you can learn.
But there are other laws
just like those laws with a cause and
effect that you cannot learn unless Allah teaches.
He teaches you what you couldn't know yourself.
Allah
says was slapped on them, was struck on
them. So I want you to understand this
word
that's all. There's more but if you understand
So Allah says these people that wanted to
be mentally colonized
they were struck with
So what in the world is it?
It comes from the Arabic word
When a road,
people step on it a lot and it
becomes smooth.
Like, if you live in some place where
there's not a lot of, pavements and things
like that. There's grass and weeds and things
and people walk and walk and walk and
between the weeds there's a path that becomes
smooth and there's nothing growing on it because
people step on it so much. Right? That
would be
So it becomes stepped on so much, it
becomes smooth.
They use it for a wall. Somebody built
a wall to keep their neighbor out.
But if they if they made the wall
1 foot tall,
so the guy could just
hop over, this is useless, it's it's too
short. That kind of a wall is called
It's too low.
The same way baytun
They they say for a house, you know,
when you're buying real estate, you wanna buy
real estate on top of a hill or
a little bit elevation because if it rains,
the water will come down. But if you
bought your bought your house at the bottom,
everybody else's problem is not in theory. It
becomes your problem. Your house is the one
that gets flooded. That's
in Arabic.
They use this for,
for a for a necklace.
In the necklace, they have these, you know,
cheap beads but they have the pearl or
they have some expensive one that dangles at
the bottom.
You know. So
the the the expensive ones dangle at the
bottom. They're actually called
or the ones that dangle at the bottom.
So all these examples and what is the
what are they, you know, in a in
a great lexicon of the Arabic language by
Muhammad Hassan Hassan Jabal, he
says When someone used to be high and
it became low, that is
Someone used to be strong, they became weak.
That's daleel.
And in the social sense, someone used to
have self respect
and now they enjoy people stepping on them
and keeping them low.
That's the dili.
So what happened to Muslim cultures?
Where if you pretend
if if you there are cultures today and
I know I've visited them. I've just have
those have had those conversation. Muslim cultures
where if a woman is wearing hijab, she's
considered a villager uneducated and backwards.
And the moment they act more They they
they wanna act more American
and more Western
than Westerners.
They don't even act that question.
That you wanna Why? Because we wanna feel
like we're modern.
We wanna feel like we're modern. What's the
biggest and the You'll notice war torn countries
where entire,
you know, cities have been decimated.
People have been destroyed and those same people
those same people, their sense of value comes
from hey, I just bought you know, look
at look at the brand of my belt.
Look at these shoes.
Look at this coat I got.
This is where your value is coming from.
The master says buy from me, pay me
taxes and be proud of it too.
What how more daleel can one get?
How more low can one get? This is
not about halal and haram. I want you
to understand that. This is not about tahlim.
This is about self respect.
This is about self respect.
Every and I'll conclude with this. Every culture
on earth
every culture on earth
is an extension of what was given to
Adam
Adam alayhis salam was told Allah has revealed
clothing to you so it covers your privates.
So whether you're dressed in Bangladeshi clothes, Pakistani
clothes, Afghani clothes, American clothes, Canadian clothes, British
clothes, Japanese clothes, all of them were actually
started by what was given to
Adam alaihis salam. And Allah gave us guidelines
in His book, and the sunnah of His
Messenger salallahu alaihi wasalam
to remove ignorance from the clothes and you
can wear decent clothes while being Japanese.
You can wear decent clothes while being American.
You can wear decent clothes while being Chinese
or any other nation.
It's not the cultures that were being rejected.
It was the colonization that was being rejected.
It was the it was the ruler mindset,
the worship of the ruler that was being
rejected. And subhanAllah, we are living in amazing,
amazing times.
At this time for us to contemplate ayaat
like these, especially for the young generation,
they have an opportunity to break the colonization
that has dominated the Muslim mind
for well over a century. Well over a
century. Muslims are a very powerful force on
earth. We've been sleeping for a couple of
100 years.
We've had a bad season.
We've just had a bad season, but that
doesn't mean we're weak.
We're the we're the sleeping giant.
That's what we are.
But we're starting to wake up.
We're starting to wake up,
you know.
What's happening in raza isn't just opening up
the eyes of the world
to what's happening. What's the read, the political
reality. It's not just teaching Americans. We keep
seeing freedom of speech but we don't really
have it. We keep seeing freedom of expression
but we don't really have it. We say
we keep seeing freedom of protest but we
don't really have it.
It's not just teaching the Americans that very
very important lesson. Oh my god. They they
did think of us like slaves. They just
put invisible fences.
They're not just but the Muslims are learning.
What have I been worshiping?
What cow did I just make in worship?
Like the Israelites and their golden calf.
Right? It doesn't have to be a golden
calf anymore. It could be a golden logo
of anything. It could be a a golden
Nike.
Could be a golden Ferrari.
Golden Chanel.
All golden cows.
Those are all the cows today,
you know. And all the Samadis of the
world are building it. So I pray this
is a this is the beginning of something.
This is the beginning of a new awakening
where we're not culturally dominated anymore. We can
express ourselves and think for ourselves and we're
not loyal to anything but the truth.
And we can invite the world to see
the truth instead of seeing the truth through
the lens of someone who just wants control
and manipulation. May Allah Azza wa Jalal liberate
our hearts and minds, and may Allah Azza
wa Jalal allow especially this generation to be
the one that truly liberates the ummah from
the colonization that is inside,
not just the one that is
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