Nouman Ali Khan – Building Power in Modern Times
AI: Summary ©
The importance of preparing for a large upcoming battle is discussed, including the need for power and building a complete and comprehensive system to clean and maintain horses. The speaker emphasizes the importance of training young men to ride the horse and developing a whole industry to clean up horseshoes. The crisis of Muslims and the need for individuals to take responsibility and not let anyone take advantage of them is also discussed. The importance of building power and building a culture of entrepreneurship is emphasized, along with the need for strong economic ties and building power to propel businesses and individuals to success. The importance of trust and empowerment is also emphasized, along with the need to overcome obstacles and build connections and connections with others.AI: Transcript ©
There's an ayah in Surat Al Anfal
that makes a
a call. Allah is actually making a demand
from the ummah.
And I've talked about this ayah before but
there are so many treasures inside this ayah
that are yet to be unearthed. And I
wanted to spend some time in today's khutba
just discussing some elements of this ayah.
Let me begin by first briefly translating this
ayah for all of you.
This is right after
Muslims won the battle of Badr. I think
everybody must be familiar with Badr.
Badr is over, Muslims have won,
and the enemy has been defeated and we
have collected many, many, many spoils of war
And so this is a huge time to
celebrate. This is the first time Muslims have
had a major good news for a very
long time.
And Allah says immediately after that victory prepare
in advance for them.
Meaning
you just won
and Allah is saying get ready for them.
You expect Allah to say get ready for
them before the battle.
But Allah is saying get ready for them
after you won.
Allah is letting you know they're going to
come
back. He's letting you know they're not done.
In fact and Allah is also letting you
know just by saying get ready for them
that this victory,
the preparation you made for this victory is
not enough
for the next battle. You need more preparation.
That's what Allah is letting us know.
With every victory,
the next challenge will be a bigger one
than the last one
and so you must begin preparing immediately. Yes,
there's time to There's some moments to celebrate.
It's a good thing that we have success
but immediately after that you need to focus
because the enemy is never done with you.
Now how should we prepare for them? Allah
says, Subhanahu wa ta'ala,
Whatever you can prepare of any kind of
power.
So Allah
says,
Get ready for them, prepare for them whatever
you can of any kind of power. Gather
whatever power you can.
In the Arabic language. Meaning Allah did not
limit
the definition of power.
Allah did not limit it to one thing.
Allah could have said gather more weapons.
He said gather
train your army better. He didn't specify. He
just said, Whatever kind of power.
The
first thing to note here was Allah is
not letting us ever be outside
the state of preparation. You think after the
battle is won, preparation time is over,
but no. Right after the battle is won,
the next preparation immediately begins.
Now, the second thing we learned here that
I want your attention on is power is
not one thing.
We have to stop having a simple, simplistic
definition of what power means.
For example, nowadays for many people who don't
think deeply, they think if there's an election,
whoever wins the election is in power.
Right? So we use those words. This person
became the prime minister, they're in power. This
person became the president of the United States,
they're in power.
But if you know a little bit about
politics and economics and, you know, how the
world actually works, these people are not in
power at all. They're actually just puppets, and
behind them are people that are far more
powerful, and the people that are actually powerful
are far more invisible
than the people that they put in front
of you to make you think these are
the people that have power.
So you can get angry at the prime
minister
because you'll never know why they're who's using
them.
Right? So they have puppets in front of
them that they use and if one doesn't
serve their purpose, they make them lose that
election, then they bring somebody else and somebody
else and somebody else and they don't care
which party they belong to
because the way power works is it has
its own agenda.
It has its own agenda. So one of
the one of the things I want to
bring the attention
especially of young Muslims, I want your attention
on this
is to not have simplistic
definitions of power.
It doesn't matter if there's a very large
military.
The military is not what has power.
Who's controlling that military?
Who's deciding where that military goes?
Who's deciding which way the gun points? Which
way the tanks point? Where is that
and where are those decisions even made? That's
where power belongs.
That's where the actual source of the power
is. Now Allah says
build power.
Build to the Muslims.
So that would become a mandate like every
Muslim should be thinking we need to be
thinking about building power. Allah commanded us to
prepare whatever we can on building power. But
then Allah added, wamir ri baatul kayim
and especially
building the cavalry. The cavalry means horses, horses
ready for battle.
Now let's think about that in the seal
of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. You know
Rasulullah
moved from Makkah to Madinah.
And what was the situation in Madinah? In
Madinah there was an economic crisis. If you
didn't know now you know. There was an
economic crisis in Madinah. We didn't have rich
Muslims generally in Madinah. We had very very
poor Muslims.
The Muhajirun
already lost all of their property because they
are refugees.
So they are already bankrupt basically. They don't
have any money
and the Ansar
who are sponsoring them, who are hosting them,
giving them housing, Allah says about them,
they themselves are starving.
So you've got refugees
being sponsored by poor people.
That's the situation in Madinah. So they're not
wealthy people generally speaking.
Allah says to them prepare the cavalry.
What is a cavalry I said? It's horses,
isn't it?
Now you you can imagine is a horse
cheaper expensive in the Arabian Peninsula?
It's extremely expensive. And is it is Al
asking for 1 horse or 2 horses? Is
Al asking for
if you want a cavalry, you need a
couple of 100 horses.
You need at least a 100 horses,
and once you have 1st first, there's buying
the horse,
and if you need a horse that's going
to do in
do well in battle,
you need a well bred horse.
You don't need a horse that's almost a
donkey. You need a serious horse. You need
a Ferrari horse.
You know.
And
the stronger, the faster,
the more thoroughbred the horse is, the more
expensive it is.
Which means you got to come up with
money. Where are you gonna get these horses
from?
And not only you have to get the
horse, now you have to provide a place
where the horse is gonna stay.
So you have to build stables.
Not only that, you have to provide farming
where you're gonna build, you know, get the
hay to feed the horses.
And you're gonna have to develop a whole
system to clean up after the horses and
you're gonna have to build an entire
human resource department that's, you know their only
job is to clean and train and maintain
the horses
then the horses need shoes.
You have to have an entire industry dedicated
and people specialize in building horseshoes.
They they And then you have to provide
Get the metals for those horseshoes. Get the
materials and the tools for those horseshoes. You
have to develop the entire factory where the
horseshoes are gonna be made. And then on
top of that, now you need the saddle
to sit on top of the horse.
Who's gonna build who's gonna make that? Where
you gonna get the leather for that? The
cushion for that?
The sizing for that? And then after all
of that is done, then you need people
that are gonna train young men to ride
the horse
And the training has to happen.
So this is when Allah just said, by
the way gather all kinds of power and
we think, Oh yeah, give us
Hold on a second. Hold on.
Before you Allah said prepare horses
and you you know we think, Okay. Yeah.
Horses. Wait. When Allah called for horses, he
was calling for an entire economic
machinery
that had to be built. You couldn't do
what Allah is asking
if you don't make investments
and you don't have the money to buy
the horses and you don't have the money
to create these jobs. You you can't do
it.
Now I'm gonna pause that for a second
because there's much more being said in this
ayah. But I'm gonna pause that thought for
a second and come back to us in
our time.
Muslims
are in a crisis
and these recent this last year has been
a pretty big demonstration that even though we
are 20 plus percent of the world's population,
all of us crying together
and screaming together
for genocide to stop
does practically nothing.
Practically did nothing.
And we all know that it's because non
Muslims became concerned
at what's happening,
this became a serious issue.
The world started taking it more seriously not
because Muslims were saying you can't kill innocent
civilians,
you can't bomb hospitals, you can't bomb schools,
You can't bomb refugees. You can't keep people
in a in a prison. You can't It's
not because Muslims were saying it because Muslims
have been saying it for 70 years already.
It's because some some, you know, white girl
on TikTok started crying about I can't believe
what's happening.
And now a few million people saw that
and now it's a serious issue.
Now the world takes, oh yeah, this is
a crisis.
You know what that proves?
It proves
how
we can be as loud as we want.
Nobody's listening.
Nobody cares.
And you know when people don't care? When
you don't have any power.
That's when people don't care.
When you have power,
then you say one thing
and the whole world starts shaking.
When you don't have power, you can scream
all you want
and it makes no difference.
It makes zero difference.
Sometimes when you have power, you don't even
have to open your mouth.
Things just get done.
Some people have power in their family.
They have power in their family. And you
know how you know? When they walk in,
everybody behaves differently.
They don't have to raise their voice. They
don't have to yell and scream. They don't
have to hit nobody. They have a power
already.
And so it made us realize, and it's
not a comfortable feeling, Muslims realize something about
themselves in this experience.
We
came we had to accept.
We had to look in the mirror and
realize how powerless we've become. It's an ugly
thing. It's an ugly thing to feel powerless.
Let me especially the men,
listen to this.
When you cannot get a job,
when you are unable to get a job,
when you're unable to provide for your family,
when you're unable to even take care of
yourself. Somebody has to take care of you.
Do you realize how humiliating that is?
When you have to borrow money from somebody?
When you can't even find a job yourself?
When your sister has a job and she's
paying for your bills? How
how humiliating and emasculating that is for you
because you know
the dignity of a man is he doesn't
need other people. That's part of the dignity
of a man,
you know. If we have 'izzah, if we
have this
self respect that Allah has given men,
then it will be very it's almost
it feels like death when you have to
put your hand out in front of somebody
and say, please help me. It feels like
death.
It feels
worse than death that I cannot
I mean I'm not unable to provide. I'm
unable to do something.
Now think of ourselves as an ummah.
Even though individually, Alhamdulillah, may Allah provide us
halal risk and give us continue to give
us the ability to take care of our
families and to live a dignified life and
may Allah protect all of us from being
in a position where we have to beg
someone else.
We ask Allah to protect us from that.
But
look at us as an ummah,
not as a person. If the ummah, the
Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam compared the ummah
to 1 body, didn't he? He said it's
It's like 1 body.
If we're like 1 body, aren't we always
begging?
Aren't we always begging other people?
Aren't we always standing in front of their
embassies and their government officials and saying, hey,
please stop. Please stop. We beg you. We
beg you. Please listen to us. Please listen
to us. Isn't that our state?
And it makes young people, especially young people,
very angry.
And Allah gave a very powerful ayah. Build
power.
Build power.
You'll need it. And Allah told us how
to build power. You have to build industry.
The problem is, especially the young men that
are listening now, what happens to most young
men in the modern world today? You're as
you are being raised, you're told
you better go to school and do well
in school, then you're going to get a
job. And as soon as you get a
job, then you're going to take care of
your family. And as soon as you make
this much money, then you're going to get
married. And once you get married, now you're
looking for an apartment. After you look for
an apartment, when am I gonna buy a
house and when am I gonna get a
car? And then
there's kids and then there's kids bills
and then you spent most of your life
just worrying about where the next check is
gonna come from, where the money's gonna come
from, and that you
know,
And while that's happening,
make sure you have some time to post
about the problems of the Ummah.
Right? But practically speaking, because you were so
consumed with your own life and you didn't
think any bigger,
you actually had no power or actually quite
powerless,
you know.
Now what happens in other spheres?
This is the reality that I want you
to understand. Allah Allah has created a system
in the world and that system will always
be there.
This system was there even in the time
of Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
So for example,
the hijrah,
one of the most amazing events in the
sila of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam.
The sila happened because of the support Allah
made Abu Bakr Siddiq the support for the
seerah
And Abu Bakr Siddiq was able to make
the seerah happen because he invested in the
horses, he invested in the travel guide, he
he invested in the journey,
he was
successfully
successful in business and he was able to
use that wealth to actually support
that entire journey. Rasulullah salallahu alayhi wa sallam
stopped working.
He stopped working.
He was being a Messenger of Allah full
time. How do you become a Messenger full
time and you have no work? Where's the
food gonna come from? You're still human, you
still have a mouth to feed and it's
because Khadija
had an entire business enterprise that was supporting
what Rasul was doing. That he doing.
Even behind the most noble mission that
that ever happened, the seal of the Prophet
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam behind it is business
support. Yes or no?
Isn't that the key?
So look, what what happened nowadays? You know
what happened nowadays? When we say Muslims have
to build strong business ties,
Muslims have to build strong economies.
Astaghfirullah, brother, the economy is dunya. We should
worry about the akhira.
Should worry about the akhira. So when Allah
said prepare the horses and somebody's trying to
make some money so they can buy a
horse and the reason is, Astaghfirullah, brother. Why
are you making money? Don't worry about duniya.
He should slap him across the face and
say, go read Quran.
I don't know what religion you're following, but
Allah told us to build power and you
cannot build power without building what? Wealth.
You can't build it without building wealth. You
have to.
There are some people sitting in this khutbah
today that are business people
and Alhamdulillah, Allah has given them success.
Maybe you own a restaurant, maybe you own
2 restaurants, maybe you own a grocery store,
maybe you own a gas station, or I
don't know what you own. Maybe you're in
real estate. Allah has given you success in
your business.
And if Allah has given you success in
your business, you know what my advice to
you is? Is that we need to build
economic ties.
We need to build power.
Money needs to circulate within Muslim hands.
When you have a business
and you're going to buy, you know, you're
going to get your car fixed, get it
fixed from the Muslim
business down the street, the Muslim car mechanic
down the street. And when he's going to
buy supplies he should buy it from the
Muslim and they should support each other. And
when the Muslim businesses start succeeding
and getting more successful, now they're hiring more
and more Muslims,
and they're developing more and more of that
economy. Now more people have more and more
and more financial strength. The local institutions are
stronger. When we complain,
this is the last thought I'll leave you
with before the time for the Khutba is
coming. So
we complain that the
Israeli lobby, for example,
gives 1,000,000 of dollars, 100 of 1,000,000 of
dollars to politicians
to get their opinion to turn this way
or that way.
We never asked a question, where did they
get the 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars?
And we never asked a question, if we
had those 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars, would
we give it
to influence politics or would we spend it
on our next vacation?
What's our mindset?
We don't think
in terms of building power. We don't invest
in power. We invest
either in ourselves
or when we feel guilty, there's a crisis,
then we we pay money towards a crisis.
The people that understand power, you know what
they invest in? They invest in the media.
They invest in education.
They invest in business.
They invest in these things. And when they
invest in these things,
then they start controlling even the politics.
Whoever controls the media has a huge influence
on politics. Whoever controls business has a huge
influence on politics.
Whoever controls education has a huge influence on
politics. If the Muslims are to build power,
then we have to understand what is behind
that power,
and we have to start building that power.
When Allah said,
And when Muslims start building this kind of
power, you know what's going to happen?
Allah says
Even as you are building this power, the
enemy of Allah will be terrified.
You know the
colonizers, the French and the British, when they
colonized the Muslim world, they understood how powerful
the Muslims are.
They understood it. So they made sure they
create Even as they left,
they they kind of They left without leaving.
You know that. Right?
They left they left Algeria without leaving Algeria.
They left Senegal without leaving Senegal. They left
Pakistan without leaving Pakistan. They left Bangladesh without
leaving Bangladesh.
And what did they leave behind? They left
behind systems by which Muslims will never become
or at least they're trying, Muslims should never
become economically independent.
They should always be in debt to them.
They should always have their hand out like
this.
So even though we leave, we leave them
as beggars.
They will build their entire enterprise, their entire
wealth, and their empire on the back and
the sweat of the Muslim labor
but they will leave the Muslim begging
in tatters.
That's their plan.
The plan isn't military. The plan is actually
economic.
The Muslims,
of South Asia were conquered by the British.
We know that.
They weren't you know how you guys live
in England. You know how small this country
is. Right?
Do you ever wonder to yourself
this small population
took over and we have a lot of
kids in South Asia.
How did we how did these people
colonize that entire continent?
How did they do it? Study a little
bit of history and you'll understand they were
strategic in their business moves.
They built power through business.
That's what they actually did.
They understand these things very well. Most wars
and crises in the world today,
behind them is economics.
Behind is somebody's business interest. That's all it
boils down to. When Muslims understand this even
at a local level, even at a local
level, what should be the role of a
masjid?
Even the masjid. It's not just that we
should learn, we should learn our deen here,
we should make our salah here, we should
bring our families here, we should teach our
children here, but this is also the place
where young men should learn how to start
and run a business from men that already
know how to start and run a business.
This should be a place where they get
job training. This is this is where the
hackathon should happen. This is we have a
space that we need to build power in.
So within a decade, within 10, 15 years,
this community is economically the most powerful community
in London, for example.
Do you think that's a small thing? You
shouldn't be
our community should be so powerful we don't
go to the politicians.
The politicians come to us.
What do you want?
They come to us
because for the other
other powerful forces,
it's not they don't go to the politicians.
The politicians go to them
because they have that power.
Allah already gave us the clear answer.
He told us, this is the only way
the enemy will ever fear you.
Allah's enemy. And Allah didn't and he said,
This is the last thing I'll share with
you for today.
Allah said the one you are scaring is
Allah's enemy and your enemy.
Who did Allah mention first? Himself or us?
He mentioned himself first. Adulullah first.
Why?
You have to understand
that when Allah is telling us to build
this power
not for our sake,
not against our enemy.
By saying Addu Allah, now I am doing
this because
I am
supporting the mission given to me by Allah
himself.
My mind is clear.
This is why I'm building it. This is
why I'm empowering young people.
This is why I'm investing in them.
This is why I want them to grow.
You know what we've done? What we have
to we have to crush this now in
ourselves. You know what Muslims do nowadays? It's
ugly, but I have to say it like
it is, like I see it. If if
there's a what we do in our communities,
if somebody's becoming successful,
everybody else starts attacking them until they fail.
Then somebody else becomes successful.
Every, these people, you know, they think they're
so much better and this and that and
start questioning their intentions, start questioning their integrity,
start
destroying them from within.
If somebody opened up a restaurant and it's
very successful,
you're like, hey, how come he opened it?
I should have opened it. You know what?
I'm gonna go eat the food and after
the restaurant closes, I'll talk to the chef
and say, hey, why don't you come work
for me?
The only way you're going to grow your
business is by destroying somebody else's business.
You know what this is? This is the
This is when we become enemies of each
other.
We see each other as competition.
We see each other as comp In fact,
we have it's so bad now that even
inside a family, if one brother starts becoming
more successful than another brother,
then the brother who's not as successful is
looking at his older brother like an enemy.
He can't stand it.
He can't tolerate it. And what do communities
do that have wilayah? You know, Allah says,
Those who disbelieve, they are allies to each
other. You know what happens with them? When
one of them starts a business, they say,
hey, your business, it's doing good, but I
think it can do a lot better. I
opened up a restaurant and it was like
yours, but I succeeded in this way, this
way. Let me tell you what I did.
Free advice. Come on. Let me just give
you this. Let me give you this. Let
me give you this. Let me train you
with this and let me build you.
They're building each other up. They're not tearing
each other down. They're building each other up.
And when one of them becomes successful, the
moment they become successful, they say, hey, I've
reached some level of success. I wanna give
back to my people.
I'm gonna come back and hey, I I
reached this level of success. I wanna Who
else is interested in doing this? Let me
help you get up too because we can
all grow. There's enough to go around.
That's the mentality of wilayah. That's what Allah
says.
Believing men and believing women are allies to
each other. They support each other. We have
the kind of culture
I saw if I didn't see this with
my own eyes, I wouldn't believe it. We
have the kind of culture
I went I went to a place where
there's lots of in a non Muslim country,
we have a lot of Muslim doctors. Yeah.
And doctors make good money in that country
that shall not be named. But the you
know, the guy becomes a doctor. He's the
head of the department in the hospital. He
makes he's successful
And he sees at one gathering, he sees
some young call you know, medical college students
that are asking him for advice
and asking him where to apply and how
to because they're asking obviously someone who's already
reached success.
And he purposely gives them bad advice.
And then you wonder why did he give
them bad advice? Oh, because
this new generation,
if I give them good advice, I can
already see this guy, this 20 year old
is 5 times smarter than me when I
was 20.
So he will become
2 twice as successful as me in 5
years. What took me 20 years? He'll do
this in 3 years.
I don't need that kind of competition.
I'm gonna give him bad advice so I
can slow down his progress as much as
possible.
This is the mental This is the This
is a very common Muslim mentality.
And until we have that mentality, this is
the last thing I'll share with you, until
we have that mentality,
we cannot build power.
We cannot live up to this ayah.
Maybe the most powerful thing our enemies have
been able to do is not bombs.
The powerful the most powerful attack of our
enemy is not the media. The most powerful
attack of our enemy is they keep us
from being allies to each other.
They keep us from being because they know
if once the Muslims become allies to each
other, that's it. That's Antumullah alone.
Then you're then you're on top. There's nothing
that can stop you.
Nothing terrifies them more than our allegiance. So
that create as many divisions,
as many suspicions,
as much
competition, as much hatred
within the Muslims as possible.
Within the Muslims as possible.
And so we'll see,
the masjid down the street as competition.
We'll see the da'wah organization that's different from
ours as competition. We'll see the other restaurant
as competition. We'll see the other Sheikh has
competition from this Sheikh versus that Sheikh. It's
not the UFC bro.
And so long as we fall into this
trap over and over and over again, we
will keep crying and nobody will listen to
our cries because we never build power.
We were never able to build power.
May Allah
let us overcome this trap of shaitan, and
may Allah
truly make us awliya to each other when
from now on when you come to Jum'ah,
you're gonna come every week. That's an invitation
from Allah. Nobody had to send you an
email.
You came on your own. Every every week
when you come, meet someone you haven't met
before,
find out about what they do. The elders
here especially go out of your way to
meet with the young people here.
Meet someone new. Find out what they're doing.
Find out what kind of help you need.
Even if you start helping each other 1%.
Sometimes help is just advice.
Sometimes help is just you connected somebody to
somebody else. That's just a little bit. You
can imagine within a year what kind of
powerful community this place can be. Can Can
you imagine within a year when you walk
in here, you know everybody's face?
Is that is that impossible? It's not impossible,
but we're not thinking about wilayah. That's why
it's not happening. We're not thinking about building
those ties. That's why it's not happening. Not
just Assalamu Alaikum and grab your shoes as
fast as you can.
Instead of that, take every week as an
opportunity to build alliances,
to build connections, to network.
Anybody who's made it successful in their career
here knows your career, your business is all
about connections, isn't it?
Well, there's a few 100, sometimes few 1,000
connections every single week. They're right there. It's
a Muslim convention every week Allah created so
that the Muslims will be the most powerful
nation on earth. We just don't use it.
Start using it.
May Allah make us the ummah we're supposed
to be. And may Allah give victory to
this
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