Ramadan 2022 – The Religion of Your Father #15

Nouman Ali Khan

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He was here during about once again everyone said Mr. camara tonight Alberto. We're looking at Soto sharara. Today. That's the 26th Surah of the Quran. And here, Allah azza wa jal will mention yet another dimension of that first episode, that Allah wants us to know about Ibrahim Ali Salam when he confronted his father in a society. But again, every time Allah mentions a similar passage, you will see commonalities and then there'll be divergences and Allah will mention new things that he did not mention anywhere else. So I'm going to go through the portions of this that are familiar to us that we've heard before, in more brief terms, and then the parts that are new to us, that Allah is adding

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something that we haven't heard before, I'm gonna highlight that inshallah in some more detail, so Allah azza wa jal and by the way this, this mention of Ibrahim Ali Salaam is after a full detailed account of the story of Masada Salaam and his and his Showdown with Iran. So at the end, by the end when the pharaohs Pharaoh and his armies are drowned, then Allah says we're in Arabic, Allahu Allah, Aziz Ibrahim, that certainly Allah, you're your master. In fact, he is Article Salam, O Allah, He is the ultimate authority, and he is loving and care all loving and caring. So this is actually Allah, merging two of his names together his authority and his love and care, which seems like opposite

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things. Right. And this is Allah's way of highlighting that in each of these conflicts, there are those who received Allah's authority. And there are those who were recipients of Allah's love and care. So Ibrahim Musa alayhis salam received the Rama from Allah and Pharaoh and received the wrath of there is from Allah azza wa jal, right so he challenged there is of Allah and he received, he got a taste of that from Allah azza wa jal the same way now he's turning to Ibrahim Ali Salman says what Urla him number Ibrahim. So read on to them. The news of Ibrahim is called Le OB he will call me he matar Boone when he said to his father and his people, what is it that you're worshiping called Luna

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Buddha or SNAM? And they said we worship idols. Whenever Lulu Aki Fein and we stay and in devotion in front of them we stay contemplating in front of them

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either hell yes. Morona. So this is again familiar already, right? So Allah holiness Morona come into the room. He said, do they hear you when you call? Oh, you're in federal income? Are they benefiting you or your daughter ruined? Or are they causing you harm? Or Lubell vagina Alba and Metallica follow no response to any of those questions? No. We found our fathers doing exactly this. They used to do exactly this. We're following tradition. So as I was mentioning before, idols are a god but tradition can also become a god. Right tradition is also something that is worshipped when something becomes word

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See of absolute obedience without question, and there is no room for reason in it, that becomes your God. You see, now the thing in Islam is that we arrive at the conclusion that there is a God, that there is such a thing as prophethood there is such a thing as an afterlife, we arrive at those conclusions intelligently intellectually. But once we arrive at those conclusions, then after that whatever Allah says, I don't have to question each of those answers, or each of those statements and verify their logical veracity. So let me give you an example. It is for a non Muslim it's or or someone questioning whether or not why should they be Muslim? It's completely okay for them to

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question why should I believe in the existence of a creator? And what should my relationship with our Creator be? Why should I believe Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah? So Allah, Allah? These are legitimate questions, why should I accept the notion of an afterlife? These are all completely legitimate fair questions. In fact, Allah wants people to ask these questions. And Allah is answering contemplate, you know, the thoughtful answers to those questions through the discourse in the Quran. Why should you believe in Allah is your what should your relationship with him be? Why should you believe this life is finite? And there's a kind of continuity, this is a step in a

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journey. All of those questions have been addressed in detail in the Quran. But then after they've been answered, then for example, or consult with Allah, then then for example, your your,

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your you enter into Islam, and there are five prayers in Islam, right. And each prayer has its own technicalities. So we pray three Raka, or units for non Muslims, right, we pray three of them in Maghrib. And we pray four of them in Asia. And we pray to fold and Fajr. Right. And the numbers have changed. Right? And somebody says, What's the logical reason why three and Margaret for NASA and two, you can come up with your own philosophical theory, it means nothing. That's just your conjecture. There is no logical explanation that has been granted to us for such a thing. You understand? And, and we're completely okay with that. We're perfectly okay with us not getting an

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explanation for why or why not.

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In some things, once once you take this step intellectually, after that there's complete surrender. After that step, there is complete surrender. The the criticism Islam has of other worldviews is that there is complete surrender without any intellectual base. The complete surrender is to the tradition itself. You know, there's an assumption that the tradition cannot be wrong. My parents couldn't be wrong, my culture couldn't be wrong. All those 1000s of people couldn't be wrong. questioning them is like questioning my my sense of belonging, my sense of loyalty to those people. That is where Islam steps in and says, No, you have to ask questions. You have to you have to use

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Flickr, you have to use up and follow their opinion, why don't you think why don't they, you know, Lea, a fella Mia brew alcohol, then they contemplate the word that's being said. So it does, there's this two dimensional thing. Now what happens a lot of times the the criticisms you get against Islam, right? You'll say, Oh, this, this verse, or this idea is, you know, doesn't make any sense, or this particular incident doesn't make any sense. First of all, let's understand that properly. Second of all, the problem is you're asking about the branches. When I don't have to convince you, Muslims don't have to be convinced of any of the branches, they have to be convinced of the root. We

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have to be convinced first and foremost of the root. And then after that the branches makes sense. But I would also argue, as far as the branches are concerned, we have to have a deep understanding of what Allah is saying. Like yesterday, I was talking to you about Alicia keen, in Surah. October, how how easy is it for somebody to read almost a decade and sort of totowa and say, See, this is about all the Hindus in India, or this is about all the Buddhists in Southeast Asia, or this is about you know, whatever, Taoism, Buddhism, it's about all of them. It wasn't about all of them. These Ayat were about the people who had desecrated the Kaaba, and we're enemies of the Prophet

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sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. So what we do sometimes is we because we don't have a deep understanding, we become really passionate about what Allah is saying, without actually knowing what Allah is saying. So the passion for our deen shouldn't be misplaced. I will first analyze this stuff first, understand its placement first, then you become absolutely passionate about it, for sure. You know, so hear what he's saying what the answer that they're giving. I want to my my thought process, my personality, my outlook and my religion. It needs to resemble the outlook of Ibrahim alayhis salam, not the outlook of the people that he was criticizing. So when his people said we follow this

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because our fathers did that stuff

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Good enough. Now let's take a little bit of more of a step.

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There are conclusions. In our tradition see, the tradition, Islamic scholarly tradition is a vast thing. It's not a small body of literature, it's 1000s upon 1000s upon 1000s, hundreds of 1000s of people studying in, in every generation for a millennium and a half across different continents, they're studying this religion. And they're studying this different aspects of this religion. They're studying the seed of the Quran, they're studying Hadith, they're studying Fick, etc, right? And there is this enormous body of literature having studied this religion, right? So when you have you can call it the kind of the tradition precedent of Islamic literature. There's this, you know,

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in, in constitutional law, they have legal precedent, right. So when they're looking at a new case, like the Supreme Court is looking at a case, and the lawyers can bring a precedent from a previous case, that was that was fought in the trial on trial in the 1800s. And say, there's one similarity between that case and this case. And because the Supreme Court already judged in that case, using this, this this, now, I'm going to use that as an argument that we need to judge that way again. So this idea is of legal precedent, this issue has been dealt with before, this is the conclusion that was reached. And therefore that is just that is evidence enough to re use that conclusion, reuse

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that method in this case, right. So that's the idea of legal precedent. The issue is, however, that even now, there is there is a an actual divide. And the divide is getting bigger and bigger, and people don't realize it. There's a divide between scholarship, like actual deep scholarship of Islam in the Muslim world, and around even even now, in many parts of the Western world. There's good scholarship on Islam, by Muslims. And then there is the popular masses. There's the larger masses, right? And what's happened is the top level scholarship. And this has been my personal experience, this might sound controversial to some of you. But it's been absolutely my personal experience. The

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top level scholarship of Muslims around the world is so much more broad in their understanding. They're so much more appreciative of different ways of looking at things. There are so they're not as black and white on every issue. They're far more gray on many issues. Right? When you get to senior senior level scholarship, people whose hairs have gone white and Cray, studying this Dean for 5050 6070 years. And they are not as you know, hard lined or passionate about one issue or the other and screaming at everybody else, who doesn't look at it the same way as they do. In fact, they have a deep respect for even positions they don't agree with and understand where they're coming from,

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and see that there's room for both on and I'm not going to name specific issues, but particularly if you wanted to say in matters of Fick there are Estela fat. And at the top levels of scholarship, this is respected because we have a humility towards knowledge, the more someone becomes mature in their knowledge, the more they become humble to what they don't know. Right, their their, their their perspective opens up. But if you compare that to the younger students have been, like the younger generation, you see young people, psychologically young people, they like to see the world as black and white. Yeah, like when you're a teenager, right? You're right. And the whole world is

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wrong. Your parents don't get you the world doesn't understand you. Like you just want to see the world is black and white. When you go to college, you become a passionate activist for one thing or another without understanding all sides of an issue. Four or five years later, the real world hits you're like, man, was I stupid? Or was I stupid? And then you see other young people doing the same thing. You're like, I've been that dumb before. I remember I remember, I see myself in your stupidity. It's a good reminder of how you know, because what age does what experience does, what knowledge does is it makes you realize, Wow, I was really myopic. In my view, I had a really narrow

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minded view. And I was really passionate about it, because youth comes with passion, right? So what happens a lot of times with students of Islamic studies that are early in their studies, their passion for this Deen, their passion for what they've learned is so intense, that they bring that passion and it almost it turns into a bias in what they're learning. So if they heard something from their Sheikh, or they read something in a book that represents the right position, and that book said, Oh, this is the majority of scholars agree with this, which is my favorite word. The majority of scholars, when you talk to scholars, and you use the word majority, they said name 10.

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Because you know what happens? People have view x, and the people who have the opposing view, you know what they say? The majority says this, this guy is hanging out with a bunch of people, the majority of whom agree with him. This was a bunch of people

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and they say the majority of the OMA No, bro, the majority of your OMA, like the majority of your hood agrees it's not everybody. So we throw these buzzwords out Oh, all the some someone times this young man was so fired up he said all the Sahaba looked at it this way. I was like really all of them.

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Oh, the sahaba. Look, we did you get that? Where did you get a survey of all this? I still haven't had any survey of all the Sahaba ever, on any issue. Even when we talk about HMR EJ Marrison you might means consensus is a nuanced thing. There are categories of edge Ma, there's a Jamar fuqaha, Sahaba, there is HMR of the most knowledgeable, there are people considered, you know, new newbies, you know, new into Islam Sahaba, there were people that were seasoned and matured and very knowledgeable. When the knowledgeable agree that was one kind of consensus, because that's not everybody. That's not everybody. Then there's Mr. o'mara is Sahaba. Then there were Sahaba

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companions of the Prophet PsycINFO, who were in positions of leadership. Right. So there's governors and heads of state, and they're in political positions of Lead or head of tribe, when they make a decision. That's also because they made a decision that represents everybody, right. So that's another kind of HMR. And then a third kind of admirers who do like Alhadeff, meaning, oh, these companions were at the Battle of butter, they all agreed, this is the day it started. They all agree this many people die, they all agree this is how many swords we had, etc, etc. Because they were all there. Right? But you know what we make it sound like any single narration, you hear any single

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thing you're all all of them must have agreed? This is, this is what this habit? No, no, we like to oversimplify when we want to see the world as black and white, then we read something, and we want to turn it into black and white. But again, when you get to the top levels of scholarship, and I've been I've been blessed to be able to have the company of some great aroma historians for QA. And when you sit in their company, and you ask them the same issue, you hear shocking answers their own, if they're the top of an institute, their own students down the trickle the pyramid, the ones at the bottom, that are just graduating and fired up ready to give her buzz. Those guys are saying the

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opposite of what their senior teachers saying sometimes. Why? Because they want us they want the black and white world. And you know what passion does, right? What passion does in any, in any society, it will do this and Muslim society, it will do this a Hindu society, it will do this in at a Trump rally, it'll do the same thing. When somebody can invoke your passions, then you are absolutely right. Everybody else is a trader. It's the same psychology of firing up a crowd. And once you do that, once you create that kind of narrative, then you cannot use reason anymore. Because if somebody pokes a hole in your passionate speech, then they are a traitor. They're a

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hypocrite. They're the kuffaar. They're their conspiracy by Israel.

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Like, whatever, whatever you want to come up with. But you can't be wrong. You see this, I'm bringing all of this up, because when the followers of Ibrahim Ali Sam said, our ancestors did it like this, the valley kind of alone, they sat in worship like this, what are they saying, we're not willing to listen to reason, we're not willing to listen to criticism, we're not willing to have an intelligent debate or a discussion, we already know we're right. And we already know you're wrong, because you're not in our team. So they're already looking at this as a contest. The quest for knowledge, when I've had interesting opportunities to go speak to, you know, students that are

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studying Dean in different modalities around the world, right, and they say, Give some to see how to the students, I'm not an island. I'm a student, I'm not a scholar. But I've been given this, you know, awkward position sometimes to give advice to students that are studying. And my consistent advice all the time, is you need to make sure you will when you're going to learning a song, you will develop a love and an affinity for your for your share, or for your school, or for your school of thought, or for the people that you're studying with the environment that you're in, right you'll develop a love and an affinity for them. But your loyalty should always be to knowledge. You can

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graduate from here you can graduate from us or you can graduate from network aroma. You can graduate from Durban you can graduate from humble Korra or the university in Medina, you can graduate you know from Phys. You can graduate from anywhere to go and study Islam. You can graduate from iulm in Malaysia, you can graduate from anywhere, become a chef and people will call you a chef. But you know what? The thing you should be afraid of is now because you graduate you came out of a certain school. Now you represent that school not the truth. You represent that school. So everyone who disagrees with your school, you're against them. You've already picked a team. That is not your

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mentality. You went there not to join a team. You went there to learn.

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And when you came out of there, you're now in a position to learn more than anyone else. So you didn't come

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out to be a teacher, you came out to be a better student, you know, someone who's going to inquire more, someone's going to ask more questions, someone's going to engage in more inquiry, you know, and when that happens, then the OMA also calms down. But when that doesn't happen, we get a bunch of mafias around around the world, in the name of Islamic schools. That's what you end up getting mobs, you get mobs and people, you know, firing people up over issues that their own teachers would never do. This is the level of immaturity that permeates that trickles down. Right. And so, when we read these ayat about ancient times, and the mentality of those people who didn't want a religion that

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was based on intellect, they wanted a religion based on their tradition. You know, we we have to understand how we might fall traps into that, and I don't criticize our please understand this, I don't want to criticize our scholarly institutions and our modalities and our programs around the world. In fact, they are an asset to the OMA, there are people that are learning their religion, they're studying this Deen, they've dedicated live their entire lives, youth are dedicating years of their life to study Islam. Our job is to make sure that we help those institutions grow, to evolve, to meet the challenges of the day not to criticize criticism is easy, because just go these people

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are this way these people are backwards, these people are hardliners, but who's going to go and do something constructive? Who's going to go and help? You know, so we have to we have to be concerned that we raise an OMA that is Ebrahimi in its thinking. And you can tell you can immediately tell whether or not we're following the thought process of Ibrahim alayhis salam, because if someone is if you're being turned against another group,

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right, if you're in the in the hotbar, in the speeches or whatever, you're being fired up against another group, then you already you know, there's something wrong. Because we get passionate about ideas. We get passionate about truths. We get passionate against falsehoods, not against people.

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We hold on to principles, we deepen people's understanding of principles. And when that becomes deep enough, then you don't have to criticize groups or any someone can think for themselves and say, You know what, this group or that person or this person, I agree with 70% of what they're saying. But these 30% things, they don't seem to be applying the right principles. So I'll disagree with that part. But that doesn't make them a coffin. That just means 70% of what they're saying is still good. And I'll take it, I don't have to just put people in a category. I can take good where I can get it. And when I don't take something I have reason for not taking something without resorting to

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labeling. That labeling thing is actually a sign that we are no longer thinking the way Allah azza wa jal would want us to think. So when when he says here on when his his the nation says, Well, we're just gonna Abba Anika Danika that's how they used to do it. That's how everybody does it. The majority is doing it all the people around me doing it, how can all of them be wrong? This kind of thinking needs to break out of Alright, American country, terrible Dune, and two more about the moon in the whole model will leave a lot of Malala mean Inshallah, this part I will. I've already taken too long. So I'll talk to you about this part tomorrow in shallow Tala, and we're gonna go to this

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amazing prayer of Ibrahim Ali Salam, as he was leaving his house as he was being kicked out of his house and he was going to not know where he's going to where he's going to find shelter. Where is he going to find food? Here, he knows nothing. And he's being abandoned. And in that moment of abandonment, he made a prayer as a young man, and we're going to read about that prayer inshallah to Allah tomorrow. BarakAllahu li Walakum Philip Quran Al Hakim, one