Nouman Ali Khan – When We Idolize Our Feelings
AI: Summary ©
The conflict between the people ofialoh and the people of Banu Israel led to the deaths of the people and the weakenings of the people ofialoh. The followers of theippedidist movement and their belief in Allah's teachings are important drivers of the new Islam culture. The importance of learning from the past and finding one's way of doing things is emphasized. The history of Islam is discussed, including the origin of the title Islam, the use of words like "has" and "hasn't", the importance of preserving one's own history, and the need to be mindful of one's own actions. The speakers encourage viewers to visit their sponsorship page and ask for help in helping students understand the concept of no race, no nation is better than another.
AI: Summary ©
Inshallah,
in today's brief reminder,
I'll be talking to you about primarily one
ayah from Surat Al Araf. This is ayah
number 138.
Allah described for a pretty extensive period in
Surat Al Araf
how Musa alayhi salam confronted Firaun. It's one
of the places in the Quran where Allah
describes the confrontation
between Musa alayhi salam and Firaun in some
detail.
And this is the end of that confrontation.
At the end of that confrontation we all
know Fir'aun has drowned
and Allah has brought an end to that
powerful civilization
and the people that were weak have been
given power.
Have been given power, they've been able to
cross the water, and they have survived.
These were the people that were with Musa
when they saw
the 9 signs.
Allah says 9 clear signs, miracles. And those
miracles did not happen in one day. Allah
says
Allah held
the people of pharaoh hostage for multiple years.
So these were people that saw the power
of Allah in miraculous signs multiple times over
and over again
under the leadership of Musa alaihis salam. I'm
talking about the Banu Israel. And of course
he's fighting
and he's he's confronting Firaul for them and
Arsal al Ma'ala bani Israel
he just wants them to be freed like
his mission
from Allah
is to introduce Firaun to Allah
and to to get these hostages released, to
get these these captives, these slaves
released and let them go from Egypt. That's
his mission.
And they saw, you know, we we sometimes
we look at the story from the perspective
of Firaun. And he saw all these miracles,
his people saw all of these miracles and
they said,
doesn't matter which miracle you bring us. We're
not going to accept what you're saying. We
we will believe you. And when the miracles
would become overpowering,
even though this khutba isn't about those miracles,
essentially what happened with those miracles is a
superpower
became paralyzed.
So for example Allah would send them a
disease.
You you could have the strongest army in
the world. What are you gonna do when
there's a disease?
Or Allah will send a storm. You could
have the best best castles, best military, best
equipment, best infrastructure. What are you gonna do
when a tornado comes and rips through your
buildings?
The kind of damage that it would do
and it would do over and over again
or they would get a frog infestation, it
would destroy their crop, or they would get
contaminated water,
blood in their in their water supply.
These things were
paralyzing
Egypt. They were paralyzing that superpower. Because a
superpower is only a superpower if it has
economic
prosperity, if it has economic power.
These miracles were destroying the economy of Egypt.
And because they were destroying the economy, they're
destroying the money supply. If they're destroying the
money supply, everything else is falling apart.
So, they were paralyzed for many many years.
And Banu Israel who had no money, no
power, no military, no media, no resources,
They saw the world's greatest superpower
brought on its knees,
just by the miracle sent by Allah
And the mightiest army in the world couldn't
kill 1 man couldn't kill Musa 'alayhi salam
who's living among them challenging them to their
face
So they saw
that when Allah decides to protect someone no
one can harm them
And when Allah decides to destroy someone
and weaken someone it doesn't matter how strong
they are. It doesn't matter. They saw it
with their own eyes.
And then when they saw that there's water
in front of them
and there's nowhere to escape and Firaun has
brought all of his different armies because Firaun
was not in one city. Firaun was an
empire.
Egypt was an empire. So he was in
the capital city,
but he had military spread out in bases
across the region.
He gathered all of the bases, all of
the armies,
and said, Well, we're gonna end this problem
once and for all. We're gonna kill every
last one of them.
That's what his final his final solution.
You know. He was gonna mow the lawn.
Right? And that this is what he was
going for.
And when he went for that and they
saw water in front of them, there's no
escape, they were convinced.
We're gonna be caught up. There's no way
there's nowhere to go.
And
in that moment of absolute death, they saw
Allah create life. They saw the water part,
They saw a way out for them. And
the same way that was life for them
was the same way that become becomes death
for Firaun.
Okay. All of that has happened.
But I wanna talk to you about ayah
number 138. What happened to these followers of
Musa alayhi salam? The followers of Musa alayhi
salam, we don't call them Jews. We call
them Muslims.
Because if you follow a prophet
at the time of that prophet,
and you're following his teachings, and you accept
him as Allah's prophet, then you are a
Muslim. These are the Muslims of that time.
It's easy to look at them as Bani
Israel and then separate ourselves from them.
Because then they are a different nation, we
are a different nation.
But if you actually place
these people in the Quran's perspective,
then these are the followers of a prophet
who believe in Allah and believe in His
Messenger. That is the only definition you need
for a believer.
So these are the Muslims of that time.
These Muslims have now crossed the water. Allah
says,
We had the Israel the children of Israel
cross over the water, cross over the sea.
So now they've crossed.
So eventually
they
they came upon
they're in a new area now. They haven't
been to this area before
and they came to a village. They came
to a new town.
They've never met these people before. They've never
had any interactions with them before. So they
observe that these people are living in this
civil civilization and they notice something about them.
They are sitting meditating.
These people have their own religion.
They sit and they meditate in front of
statues.
They sit and meditate in front of idols.
So they have temples.
They have these houses of worship.
Maybe some of them are on top of
hills and mountains, and they're very beautifully designed,
and they have these golden or whatever colorful,
you know, gods and massive statues and people
come and they, you know, they they put
flowers in front of them and they put
food in front of them and they have
all these rituals around them. And it's a
very festive thing that these people do and
they have this this very decorated,
religion.
And so they saw
this and they said
Could you make us a god like they
have?
Could could could we make something like that
too? Because that's that's pretty I'm not saying
you have to have multiple gods. Okay? They
have multiple different ones. We get it. We
only believe in 1 God. But it would
be nice if that's a pretty good update.
You know?
Islam,
of course it's true but times have changed
and we're in a different place now and
because we're in a different place these people
are doing something
more modern that we saw before
So, you know, it's not like there shouldn't
be any ijtihad.
There should be some updates. So, you know,
I think this is a pretty good suggestion.
Musa, we should we should learn from the
new culture, and we should update the teachings
of our religion, and we should take some
of the good things that these people are
doing
and improve our religious practice because after all
if you have a statue it's a lot
easier to concentrate
it's a lot easier to visualize
If I'm if I'm ever forgetting Allah, then
I can just remember the statue. It's much
easier to imagine. I can't imagine Allah. So
it's just mentally it's gonna be easier. Visually
it's gonna be easier. I think it'll be
a lot more We'll fit in this culture
a lot better because then they won't think
that we are some aliens or some other
people that came here. We don't belong here.
There they have their temple. We have our
Muslim temple. It's gonna look a lot like
theirs. So we could just take some of
that stuff and it would be a good
thing. It'll be a good thing. This this
way we can fit in better. We'll be
better, you know, because
we have to keep up with the times.
And I hope as I'm describing this to
you,
some of this sounds familiar.
That
this Allah mentioned these stories in the Quran
and these episodes in the Quran after everything
they went through,
the fact that they were thinking like this
is is telling you something.
That Muslims, there will always be a population
of Muslims
who doesn't matter how much truth becomes clear
to them.
To them, the religion
is actually not about following the truth.
To them, the religion is about being culturally
acceptable.
They want to do something that is similar
to They see other cultures as superior.
They're better. They're more advanced in some way
and we should be more like them. We're
too backwards.
We're we're far too backwards.
And so the idea will be that perhaps
we should suggest that we should practice Islam
a little bit differently so we can be
better we can move forward with the times
also.
Even when it comes to changing our gods.
Now, alhamdulillah, we're living in 2024.
We're not impressed by temples.
We're not impressed with other you know, you
don't go to a Buddhist temple and say,
man, I wish I had a giant Buddha
in front of them salah. Like, nobody nobody
thinks like that.
Nobody thinks like that.
But we have different idols.
We have different statues.
These were the statues of that time. We
have to understand what the statues are of
our time.
And that was the worship of that time.
People used to sit in front of these
idols. They used to put their hopes in
these idols. They used to think these idols
are all powerful. They represent perfection.
They represent protection. They represent all these things
and So
what is it that people put their hopes
and aspirations in in our time? Guys, sorry
for the interruption in the middle of this
lecture.
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When
Muslims
travel and settle down in other communities, you
know, where where Muslims have been a civilization
that settled in to many communities around the
world.
And some of them are more recent. Like
for example, the Muslim migration to Europe,
even though some trickles of migration were happening
for centuries,
within the last century, century and a half,
there's a lot more migration to Europe. So
Muslims are a new phenomenon in many places
in Europe.
Muslims are a very new phenomenon in the
already new country, America.
Right? So we're we're we're new in many
places. And in those kinds of places,
there's,
you know, complete freedom to be as you
please, to do as you please,
to to become whatever you want to become.
And in that world there are new idols.
And those idols are things like philosophies and
ideas.
Like what's so wrong with LGBT? What's so
wrong with that? I mean they're human too.
What's wrong with homosexuality? There's nothing wrong with
it. So why can't why can't Islam be
more tolerant?
Maybe maybe we should think about maybe we
should reinterpret some things in our religion to
make it more acceptable
and more tolerant. Because how am I gonna
answer these questions when I go to university
campus?
So we should update our religion a little
bit. And, you know, and and why why
is, why is Islam so angry?
Somebody told me the other day they're thinking
about leaving Islam
because Islam is too it's it's based on
fear.
Islam is based on fear and they wanna
be spiritual but not based on fear. And
And I said, I think the only fear
you have is of learning Islam.
Because Islam isn't based on fear. It's based
on reason.
It's based on contemplation.
And when you when you realize a fire
is dangerous
and you're not afraid of the fire, then
that's stupidity.
So if you say, hey. I I don't
I don't believe in fire being dangerous because
it's based on fear. Well, it's based on
common sense. Some things you should be afraid
of.
Some things some things are poisonous. And
the our deen gave us the clarity to
see what's what,
how to understand it.
You find we find ourselves in a strange
situation. Muslims find ourselves in a strange situation
now, where
they're saying things like, well, you know,
we're living
in America. We're living in England. We're it's
hard, you know, it's hard living in the
West. And my kids want a Christmas tree
in Christmas. I mean we're not worshiping Jesus
or anything, but what's wrong with the tree?
It's just a little just a tree in
the house, You know? We could just put
like we could just do
around the tree. Really?
Yeah. Yeah. Just small update. It's not a
big deal. If you're gonna live in America
then you have to, you know,
go, you know, go with it. It's not
like we're living back in Pakistan or we're
not living in Bangladesh. We're not living in
Indonesia or Malay. We're living in America now.
Funny enough, there are people in Pakistan, in
Bangladesh, in Indonesia, in Malaysia that are putting
Christmas trees in their homes.
Muslims.
Right? You don't you don't have to come
to the West. The West now comes to
you. You say, hey. It's you gotta keep
up with the times.
But the question I ask, especially the young
men here,
when you say, Oh brother, it's hard living
in the West.
Is it?
Actually, it's your life is a lot easier
than most people on the earth.
And your ability and your opportunity to practice
your deen and to learn your deen is
far more open
than many of even the Muslim youth around
the world.
There are places in the world that I've
traveled to where Muslims can get in trouble
if if you find out they're reading the
Quran.
The youth can get it they can go
to jail.
They can go to jail for reading a
certain commentary of the Quran
That exists right now So when you come
and say it's hard living in the West
It's so there's so much fitna bro.
Then this this idea that you are somehow
so weak and so pathetic
that if you see other idols, then you
have to fall in front of them. What
can I do? I'm just a poor traveler
and these idols are so beautiful, then
you know, I I just mold my Islam
a little bit and fall in front of
these idols.
This is a lie we tell ourselves.
And where did that lie come from? Musa
alaihis salam diagnosed it. When he when he
heard this nonsense from them. After knowing so
much about Allah and seeing Allah's miracles, you're
gonna say you're gonna dare to say something
like that.
And that too to Allah's Prophet, to Musa
Allah said,
You are a people
that have no control over your feelings.
You are impulsive people. You are run entirely
by your emotions. Jahl in Arabic doesn't just
mean ignorance.
Jahl in Arabic
is
is
It's to not be able to control your
feelings.
So if your anger if you're angry, your
anger is out of control. You're Jahil.
If you think you're funny and you're making
jokes and then you start making all kinds
of obscene jokes, you don't care who's hurt
or how inappropriate it is, you're being jahil.
You're not control you're not putting breaks on
yourself.
And the idea that Musa alaihi salam is
actually diagnosing in them is that these people
actually what they worship is their feelings.
It feels good so I'll do it.
It feels like this will make me more
acceptable so I'll do it.
It feels like this is feels, feels and
feels. The religion is a religion of feelings.
Oh I don't practice this religion because I
don't feel as good in this. But when
I go to when I I went to
the church the other day, they had a
concert. It felt so good. So I go
there instead.
Feels.
These people, Musa alayhi salam said, it is
utterly destroyed. Whatever they are drowned in, whatever
behavior they're engaged in, is meant to be
destroyed. It's already destroyed.
This is not
prosperous behavior.
This is not a better way.
This is just jahal and it's meant to
be destroyed.
And has
what they've been doing has no basis in
reality.
This is entirely made up.
If you are going to follow the religion
because it because of how it feels
then that's the religion for you.
But if you're going to follow a religion
because it's based on something, it's based on
the truth, it has Haqq at the core,
at the roots of it,
then what what these people are offering is
nothing more than empty feeling
empty feel nothingness
is
all
they're
doing.
Doesn't just mean false, it means something that
doesn't exist.
It's the abs the absence of reality. The
absence of existence is actually baatil also.
So when Allah says certain gods are BaThil,
means they don't even exist.
This is entirely a figment of imagination.
Like in other place in Quran,
Allah says These are nothing but names. You
made them up.
You and your gods. You and your your
fathers.
Look at the words of Musa alayhi salam
and followed immediately by the words of Allah
directly. There's an ltifaat.
Musa alayhi salam says, I should find you
another God other than Allah
after He gave you so much favor
over all the other nations in the world.
He gave you favor. He let you overpower
the most powerful superpower on earth.
He gave you that in your in front
of your own eyes. It wasn't even generations
ago. It was in your own lifetime, and
I should find you a different God?
This
is
your request?
And then Allah himself intervenes and says,
It's not Musa talking anymore. It's Allah himself
saying, How could you say this when we're
the ones who rescued you from the people
of Fir'aun. They were humiliating you. They were
torturing you in the worst ways. They were
slaughtering your children. They were letting your women
live. And in all of that, all of
those
Allah rescuing you from all of that was
such a huge blessing for you.
And in all of those trials was was
such a huge difficult
test for you. And Allah
allowed you to get out of all of
that test and this is what you turn
into.
Muslims of today,
we have to think about some some things.
In this ayat, Allah in this set of
ayat, Allah has taught us
to not forget our history and to be
grateful for the ways Allah has rescued us.
For example, Muslims living Muslims that originate from
South Asia.
Muslims that originate from South Asia not not
a century ago
and some of that extremism is returning now
to India for example and in Sri Lanka
and other places, Buddhism and Hinduism,
that they see Islam as a foreign
virus that came to that region and we
have to get rid of it again.
Many of the extremist elements within Hinduism
and even Buddhism are seeing that as a
problem.
But when Islam came and Islam became established
in the region and many of you originate
from that region,
There were forces
ready to mass execute Muslims
to
mass slaughter genocide
100 of 1000 if not millions of Muslims
and did not that did not happen centuries
ago. Some of you have grandparents that are
alive right now that remember.
They remember and they remember
those grandparents
that they remember, you know, going to the
masajid
begging Allah, You Allah, give us an opportunity
to raise our children on Islam.
You Allah, give us an opportunity
to become the kind the
to continue the Ummah of Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam. And
then you go a couple of generations later
and their grandkids wanna have their wedding that
looks more like a Hindu wedding than a
Muslim wedding.
And you go a couple of generations later
and they want to celebrate,
they want to idolize
idol worship and idol worshipers
like their celebrities and their icons.
This is just a couple of generations later.
It's not even centuries later.
And it reminds me of what happened with
Musa alaihis salam
when Allah allowed them to cross the water.
And this is not just for South Asians.
This also happened for example in North Africa.
This happened in Egypt. This happened in other
places. These peep these places were also colonized.
Algeria was colonized by the French.
How many of the French slaughter how many
French people slaughtered slaughtered Muslim youth,
slaughtered entire families.
And now for many Algerians,
many young Algerians,
the greatest dream
is to move to France.
What?
Within within
I mean, there's still videos and pictures of
what these people did to you.
There's still that. And there's an embarrassment in
learning Arabic and there's a pride in learning
French
among some of them.
How did that happen?
How did that so so you prefer you
take pride in the language of firaoun,
but you don't take pride in and languages
from Allah.
But I say especially for Muslims from across
cultures and across continents
that one of the things we have to
do is not forget our own history
We cannot we cannot allow ourselves to forget
our own history. Allah reminded Banu of their
own history.
And one of the things we learned from
that is we have I have to teach
my children their own history Where did you
come from? How did Islam come into our
family?
When did it get there? What were the
threats? How did Allah protect this religion?
How did we end up where we ended
up?
If you don't have perspective on that, if
you think Islamic history is just the seerah
of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam and
it's the stories of the Prophet salallahu alayhi
wa sallam, and it ended there. Those stories
are teaching you the importance of stories.
Those are the base stories. But because of
them, we have to develop an understanding of
our own histories. And if our own kids
don't even understand their own history, they have
no real sense of identity. When they go
to school, people don't I I I saw
this in Germany more starkly than I saw
here, but I don't know enough about the
experience of Muslims here to be able to
say but, you know, in Germany you have
you have Turkish Muslims that have lived there
for almost a century.
And they're lighter skinned. They don't look any
significantly different from the German. But people ask,
so you're Turkish. Right?
So you a 100 years could go by,
you're still not German. You're still Turkish.
Right? And those kids, they don't speak any
Turkish.
They they speak fluent German. They were born
there. They have a German passport.
They're German legally,
but actually the society never accepted them as
real Germans.
They're not they're not really German.
So what are they really? Do they even
have a sense of connection to anything?
Where do they belong?
They feel like they don't belong here, and
they don't belong there.
They're cut off.
They're like
wandering in the desert like is the Israelites
wandering in the desert.
We have to anchor our children in a
sense of identity.
We have to You know, I For my
own kids, I'll tell you one of one
of the things I desire for my own
children is they should master the Arabic language.
But they should master the language of the
region they come from. They should know Urdu
really really well. They should be well educated
in their home language. They should even be
well educated in Farsi. They should know it.
They should know that history and that culture.
That's part of their identity. That's what Allah
gave them.
They should have that sense. And if they
have that sense, then just like Allah calls
upon that history to remind Banu Israeel
not to become something else over time.
The same way we can keep our generations
from not becoming something else in a 100
years. We can't just be thinking about ourselves.
We're gonna have we're gonna have to think
about what our kids kids kids kids are
gonna look like.
You have to think about that.
How how are we gonna preserve that? Some
of you have already seen generations lost in
front of your eyes. Some of you've already
seen
people that you know pretend. They they're so
embarrassed by their heritage.
They pretend that they're they're they wish they
weren't that. They wish they didn't look like
this.
They wish they look like something else so
they could fit better because they don't feel
like they belong. They have no sense of
dignity or integrity in their actual origin.
But that's not their fault. I argue half
of that is the elder generations fault or
the parents' fault who didn't give that to
them. So we must deliver that to them.
May Allah Azza wa Jal make us grateful
for the favor that He's given us. May
Allah azza wa Jal give us a sense
of dignity because Allah has dignified all nations
and all peoples.
Allah be be honored all children of Adam.
When Allah revealed
and and and Rasuul salallahu alayhi wasalam said
in his final khutbah that no race, no
nation is better than any other nation. No
Arab is better than any non Arab. That's
actually Allah's Allah's Messenger's way of saying what
Allah has also said in the Quran.
The most noble among you are the ones
that have the most taqwa. All nations have
been given nobility. May Allah help us acknowledge
and realize and live by that nobility and
be true to it.
Assalamu
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