Shadee Elmasry – MSA’s What is okay and what is not

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.