Shadee Elmasry – MSA’s What is okay and what is not
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the issue of acknowledging pride and the need to address the problem of sexual orientation, which is prevalent among people. They suggest compromise and highlighting the issue of MSA, which is associated with a religious group. The speakers also emphasize the need to deal with issues related to sex, including being educated and informed about deeds, and avoid alienation.
AI: Summary ©
If you're not going to determine whether or not this is permissible
in your deen, I'm not talking about permissibility. I'm talking
about taking the proper approach to addressing these issues. If
you're just going to do it on your own, you're not going to ask
somebody who knows that religion knows the tradition knows the fic.
And you're just going to do it for the sake of convenience, do it for
the sake of increasing your following. Do it for the sake of
attracting more people, then you're obviously opening up a can
of worms and you're obviously opening up the door to fitna,
that's not the way to go about it, you're gonna have to end up
compromising on things that Islam has absolutely. Granted, you know,
permission to compromise on okay, we're talking about LGBTQ, right?
We condemn the lifestyle. It's something which is completely
impermissible. In our deen, we don't make judgments about people,
when people do in their private lives is nobody else's business
that's between them and Allah, okay, this is like an addiction.
This is like some type of test that they are battling with. Okay?
But for us to come out and say that, okay, we want to make sure
that you are treated like a human being, you have your civil rights,
and you have all of that that's not what we're against. What we're
saying is that now this person, okay, we are condoning or we are
approving of the choices that they're making the indiscretions
that they may be within our religion, you're going to
compromise on one thing today, you're gonna have to compromise on
another thing tomorrow after 50 years, after 10 years, after five
years after one year, basically, the dean and what's halal or haram
is going to end up becoming irrelevant for you, I think what
are you gonna be left with? The problem is kind of synonymous,
right? Like you have a brother who comes in and you know, you might
not know what he's doing on his weekend, you might not know that
he's an alcoholic, you might not know that he's addicted to pot.
But he comes in and, you know, he comes into MSA and he kind of has
no identity and that I think plays into the good side of MSA, right
that you come in with a clean slate, you might be the world's
greatest senator, but you go to federal budget, then you come to
clean your plate off, right. And I think what the LGBTQ community,
the same thing kind of applies, right? Like if you go in there,
and no one knows about your, you know, what, what would we call
that your preferences? And you come in there and you're, you
know, praying with everyone, you're acting normal that no one
would know that, you know, you're not publicizing your sin. But the
problem, I think, which is more prevalent now, is that people are
coming, they're very openly saying, This is why I am and you
need to make room for me in terms of what I do as being accepted not
room for me as a human. Right, because that's that's understood
as something in Assam, like you just said, Mufti, that, you know,
we don't judge you, we don't condone the act, right. So when
people start to associate themselves very strongly and say
this needs to be made. Okay. I think that's where we start to
butt heads. And we see MSA is dealing with this, like, what do I
do? And here's the thing, right, like, you have these
MSA s, and the good thing about a local massage, right, as a
massage, it has rules, right? There is by default, some sort of
gender gender separation, by default, because you have to pray
behind one another, right? There is by default, you know, a level
of this is a sacred space, we're not going to talk about, you know,
the latest, you know, episode of, you know, the Daredevil or
something on it, right? Is it there's just some level of
sacredness in it? Right. Whereas, the MSA is associated with a
secular or secular organization, university University, right. It's
just like a kumbaya of, you know, you got like, You got different
demographics of people. You have people on, like, varying levels of
Islam, you got people on different updates, you got people on
different sexuality, you have all kinds of people here, and it's
just like this big Kumbaya, how do you like, you know, balance this
because it's just crazy. Now, you I think you were telling me before
Hunter, this is where it's like, you know, people will start having
discussions about oh, you know, there'll be there'll be roundtable
discussions between males and females and people are talking
about either coming out of the closet, or they're talking about
losing their faith, or one guy is like on some other angle and he's
talking about being super religious and some other guy just
hates the opposite gender like there's just people who are coming
from all different angles that an MSA and how do you like corral
these people together? Two things is one is the law is the law. All
right, this happens all the time. Young person comes up to me and
says mufti, I got class, I can't make it for Joomla. I said, Look,
you're an adult saying Free mail. You fulfill the criteria for
Joomla you have to come for Joomla It's a sin to skip Joomla and it's
a sin to skip other parts of the deen as well. That being said, you
don't pray Joomla that's between you and Allah subhanho wa Taala it
doesn't make it right and move these we don't make things halal.
And we don't make things haram, we show you and we explain to you and
we put in front of you what the law says. Second point is though
if a person has, you know, an, a preference when it comes to LGBTQ,
right has that type of indiscretion that they have to
deal with. That doesn't make them a bad person. Absolutely not.
Right? That doesn't make them anything. That is something that
they have to battle with. It's a it's a sin just as any others
It's similar to you know, a person who's addicted to watching
* in prison who's addicted to drinking and a person
who is involved in any other thing, which is haram. Okay. And
if we look at our lives objectively, and we point fingers
at ourselves, yes, there's a lot of things that we are doing, which
are maybe not as bad or maybe even worse, right, that we could, you
know, put ourselves on the spot for I think, I think it was you
that was telling me before where the sin of Zina right is the sin
itself, whether that's as in our with a man or a woman, it's all
under the same level, you've committed the same sin right then
right? The problem is, you just cannot get married to, you know,
someone of the same gender. Otherwise, you know, there is no,
you're just a sinner just like everybody else, right? There's no,
there's no preferential treatment or in preferential treatment, you
know, outside of that, right? Unfortunately, we have now kind of
convoluted when we talk about, you know, should they be treated
differently? Or should they have the same civil rights? Or should
we champion them? Or should we, you know, protest for them, love
that comes from a whole culture of ignorance and a whole culture of
taboo that is obviously completely Islamic to start off with, we
don't treat people differently because of them being involved in
a particular sin. Right, right. Unfortunately, if that happens in
MSA, that I'd be the first person to call that out. We don't treat
people differently, because they happen to commit that type of a
sin per unit, if they're not properly observing the hijab, or
even if they're not properly dressing up, when they're praying,
Salat, the unfortunate reality is that a lot of people don't like
these Muslim circles because of those same reasons that, you know,
like, it's I can't tell you the number of times I've heard a guy
saying I don't come to msa because they judge me because I'm a part
of a fraternity or they don't judge me because you know, I have
an earring even or, you know, for sisters, the hijab when it's
something you hear on and on again, right. And, you know, I
can't emphasize how important what you just said is the people who
are in these positions, making decisions that MSA and organizing
and the ones who basically create these cliques, they shouldn't be
trying to eliminate these lakes, where they're the ones who are
pioneering and promoting these lakes, subtly, unintentionally,
they have to be held accountable, they have to be educated and they
have to be told to, you know, behave when it comes to the way
they talk. They have to learn above and they have to be people
who have, you know, some sound knowledge of the deen. Okay, be
able to appreciate what our tradition has to offer, and how we
deal with these issues. These are issues that are not going to go
away. We live in a country where these issues now we're going to be
exponentially, you know, exaggerated over the next we're
living in a generation where it's in front of our eyes. Okay, if we
look at MSA 4050 years ago, they had different types of issues that
they had to deal with. Right? This is a very, very serious issue that
we have to deal with. And if we are compromising in our values, if
we don't go back to what guidance our deen has given us, then you're
going to alienate a person not just from the MSA not just from
the masjid but from the deen altogether.