Shadee Elmasry – American Muslims- Left or Right Alliance

Should Muslims have alliances or not? And,

I've always been against any alliances.

When people talk about the Muslims

align with the left,

Muslims align with the right,

I tend to think it's mostly an imagination

because you don't have what what are you

offering?

Neither do we have a massive voting block,

let's say, here in America. England. Yeah. Right?

Neither do we have a lot of money.

So is this alliance in your head?

Is it just like something you talk about?

And the reach is one way. The discussion

is one way. No no one on that

side is catering and trying to have an

alliance with our community. So when we talk

about this, I really respect an article written

by Sheikh Mateen Khan.

Sheikh Mateen Khan is one of our neighbors

in the area, and he teaches Hanafi, and

him and I do programs.

So he says, Islam and Muslims have a

long history in America and are very much

part of the legacy of the United States.

Muslims and non Muslims have worked together, lived

together, played together. We have constructed institutions of

peace and have even fought wars together. I

would say Muslims have been involved in these

things more so than

done it all together, like, as if we're,

a significant social and political body, which I

don't think that we are in the United

States, at least in England yet, maybe.

This involves collaboration with groups whose values and

teachings may be in direct opposition to Islamic

ethics, morality code, Sharia, etcetera.

So this article attempts to guide Muslim leaders

at all levels and the general Muslim public

at large in a direction with which benefits

the national interest

and protects

Islam.

Alright. Let's take a look at the. So

the first thing, there are conditions in Islam,

but ultimately,

this subject matter is.

When do I make a deal with another

group of people?

If the deal

entails,

something forbidden in Islam, then we don't need

a discussion. We know that that's unlawful.

Right?

But if it doesn't,

but I'm getting cozy with a group that

does other bad things

or un Islamic things. That's an itchy, heavy

matter. You're really just weighing

right and wrong, and you may have ultimately

at the the worst case scenario is you

believe that person is upon a misguided error,

not sinful.

Right? You take it to this is an

error of of judgment, and it could lead

to harms in the future.

Speculation.

That's all speculation.

Right?

So he says here that

we cannot be swept up in the euphoria

of nationalism

or anti establishment rhetoric

by simply following the masses

or the words of a dynamic speaker.

After the prophet's migration,

jurisprudence, and state legislation were unified under his

guidance and the guidance of.

However, since this time, the 2 have been

separated. Islamic scholarship

is has been engaged in a process of

risk management

and the defense of Islam.

Our main priority as Muslims is to be

able to live, worship, and live our lives

in a way pleasing to Allah,

and every Muslim by necessity believes that Allah

has guided us solely for our benefit.

Alright. So the role of Islamic scholarship and

leadership has been and continues to be charting

a course that defends normative Islam through constant

harm benefit analysis.

And it's been a long time that the

leaders of the of of of nations

and

Islamic Scholarships who care about the Quran have

been separate.

Right? Somebody once asked me recently,

why is it that all the operate

by calculation

if there is, but yet all the,

all the

all the Islamic

seminaries,

they all uphold moon sighting.

Like, by the book,

the argument

it it moonsighting is the default,

and these other ideas are fatawa.

Right?

And many, many, many scholars deem these fatawa

to be

false fataw, incorrect fataw.

It's a fataw, but it's it could be

right and wrong, and they deem it to

be wrong.

Well, the answer is that Masajid aren't even

run by even the Masajid are not run

by scholars. It's crazy.

Like, their executive

power of the the scholarly class in the

Ummah has shrunk

so much

that they do not even run the Masajid

anymore.

They may run their Zawiya

or their institutions

or their.

They don't even run the Masajid.

Right? And even in Islamic countries, when they

do, it's with orders.

So

whenever Masajid are now run by predominantly run

by admins administrators.

They run Masajid, not, scholars may have more

or less input

in Masajid, and Sheikh Amin runs his from

top to bottom. I mean, Mohammed in Atlantic

City.

Hamdulah, MBIC gives me a lot of space,

but, ultimately,

the vast majority

of

Masajid are just run by admins.

An admin, you can't expect him to know

the difference between a Fethullah and a ruling

and what what is the dominant opinion of

the scholars about on a Fethullah? They're not

gonna know that. They they're not can't be

expected to know that.

It's like if I ran a hospital

right?

If I ran a hospital, I've never been

through and through in the

with doctors in the field of medicine

in a way that would

satisfy another doctor. So I'm gonna make decisions

that,

just make sense to me personally,

and that will send a lot of doc

it's gonna be pragmatics.

Docs would be going crazy.

So whenever

collaboration with another group is suggested,

you have to judge

the harm and the benefit.

Alright.

The if there is some formal agreement, that

formal agreement cannot possess anything forbidden in it.

I would go even further than that, and

I would say that it's extremely

you gotta be extremely cautious even about,

I'd be extremely cautious even about sentiment

with these groups.

Showing favorable sentiment

to the right or the left or some

other group.

If you're a scholar,

if you're a leader,

your one favorable sentiment is gonna sway a

lot of people. Right?

And

then they start to soften towards

those ideas.

And I think most people, generally people in

general, tend to be

sort of like one group.

Like, they'll take the whole thing or leave

the whole thing. Very few people can etch

out. Yeah. I agree with this, but not

this.

I like what he says here, but I'm

not like most people don't do this. They

either accept him or reject.

So that you gotta keep in mind that

mentality of, of, of the people you're talking

to as well.

So he says for this, we turn to

the legal maxim,

The prevention of harm precedes the attainment of

benefits.

This particular maxim is extrapolated among other things

from the prophetic hadith. If I forbid you

to do something, then keep away from it.

If I order you to do something, do

as much of it as you can.

It is based on this maxim, for example,

that Muslims are not permitted to to make

beneficial changes to their property that might cause

harm to their neighbor.

Some benefits me, but harms my neighbor. For

example, another example of those, I can't lower

my prices

so much

in order to benefit the community

in a manner that would put my neighbor

out of business.

And then, for example, in the old days,

you used to have,

all the juicers in one area, all the

butchers that makes life easy for everybody if

they could compare all the meat or compare

all the clothes in one area. So it's

actually we're taught in

that you're not allowed to lower your prices

even to benefit society the the people

if that would cause your neighbor to go

out of business

even if you just wanna be charitable. So

that's a halal thing that you're doing that

looks good on the outside, but it harms

somebody else.

And even if it benefits,

a hundred people in their single transaction of

buying the meat, but it destroys another person's

full livelihood and livelihood is over a transaction.

Right? Livelihood is more important. So

we don't judge in Islam

you you're, a thing just by the intent

nor by the immediate image of what it

is. It's also judged

by the clear,

result that it's having.

Now if the result is speculative

and we don't know, then that's different. But

it's always good to review this and to

to to look at these of.