Shadee Elmasry – American Muslims- Left or Right Alliance
AI: Summary ©
The importance of alliances and peace in Islam is discussed, along with the need for constant harm benefit analysis. The role of Islamic scholarship and leadership in protecting Islam is emphasized, along with the importance of evaluating the consequences of actions and cautioning against being too optimistic. The speaker also warns of the danger of false and incorrect fataways and the need for constant harm analysis. The speaker emphasizes the importance of mentality and results in decision making, and cautions against being too optimistic.
AI: Summary ©
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.