Suhaib Webb – Bound God Zarrq’s Foundations of Sufism Part 7
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AI: Transcript ©
Alaihi Salam so don't get sad about it.
So he unpacks this very powerful principle
about what we would call like
generational authority.
Even converts, you know, sometimes you're running people.
Well, brother, I converted 50 years ago, so
you need to.
Okay. I need to. I get it. You
converted 50 years ago. I got love for
you, but you might be wrong and I
might be right.
Like there's a reality that that you want
to create generational authority.
That doesn't mean that we don't respect the
sunnah. We don't look at the sunnah for
it as an interpretive
lens, of course,
but what he's saying is that should not
exist to the point where you feel now
as a Muslim community in 2019
that you have no hope.
Because you still follow
the best of creation.
And that's why even Arabi, Sheikh Al Akbar,
great shave, enfutahat al Nakia,
he said, I'm just gonna give you an
appetizer for the next one. He said,
we need to do longer than early in
the morning I think. Said after I liked
it nice to see. He said
very beautifully,
he said, I came to Mecca.
He said, I found the most ignorant human
being I've ever seen in my life.
Even out of me man, Shekel Akbar.
His student said, who's that?
He said, I found a man with a
lot of followers.
Again, the neophyte.
Right? Excited, passionate, charismatic leader with a lot
of followers. Sometimes people like weird things because
they're weird.
Right? Can't this be normal?
I had a trainer one time tell me
there's a gym down the street. I used
to go to called Vitagem.
He's a good he's in an article. He's
a cool guy. He said, man,
if I wanna, like, keep people as clients,
I give them, like, powders and stuff to
take you.
I tell him, yeah, man. Take this powder.
It's gonna help you get abs,
and they believe me.
I was like, do those powers hold on,
man. Do those powders actually give you abs?
He's like, no, man. They don't.
You just gotta eat. Right? And live a
normal life and sleep 8 hours a day
and drink a lot of water. I was
like why don't you tell them that? He
said it's not spooky.
They want spooky.
It's strange.
Don't look for spooky,
look for practical. So even out of his
head, I saw this guy had a lot
of followers, they were making them fall off,
and people were telling him, man, this shit,
yo, this shit is on. This shit is
on. Right? In our language.
He goes to him you're from the suburbs
like the sheikh is amazing.
He goes to him,
meets the sheikh,
introduces himself,
starts to talk to him and then he
said I realized he knew absolutely very little.
He was a fake
but he could talk, he could he could
spit.
So I asked him a question and this
is why I concluded
he is the most ignorant human being I've
ever met.
They said what is it? He said he
told me there's no good in the Ummah
of Mohammed.
That was his call. Muslims are lost. They're
all straining.
Don't fall for that dua.
Inspire me to die.
In a zombie cop of tonight's Sunday, Walking
Dead, in the zombie apocalypse. Right? A can
of Chili's caviar.
I paint the worst picture in the world.
It's easy for me now to be your
savior.
He said, he told me there's no good
left in the Ummah of Mohammed
and their alaihis salam, and there's no good
left on earth.
So the people were like despondent and broken.
And ibn Arabi said hada a Sheykh, this
is the most ignorant
Ahmad, excuse my language, that's what he said
I've ever seen.
So the last principle like that he talks
about is he unpacks community
is no matter what you are,
chronologically
or historically,
don't lose confidence.
And he says things like, if you lose
confidence in yourself,
then realize that a lot is greater
than your insecurity.
Like he takes you in that direction, and
then he begins to talk about
unity,
Muslim unity.
Like do we really have time to be
fighting shias?
Like, yeah. It's like it's like Sunday service
on here. You know what I mean? You
passing on the pot in a minute.
Thank you, brother. Love it, man. But we
don't have time for this. But we've been
okeydoke by so many foreign governments in our
own that Sunnis we fight ourselves.
Like, let alone them.
So he starts to talk about how do
you frame unity without uniformity?
Like how do you frame the idea of
plurality
rooted
in the one goal?
Is God in the sunnah?
So we'll talk about that,
inshallah the next time we come with the
sunnah DC. Hamdulillah. Right? It's a very beautiful
book. Probably gonna read the translation and get
lost,
because
even as Adam and it's not it's Maqada
that you say, like Maqada like
like hard cumbersome, you know. He's a brilliant
writer, but he's writing per he's writing like
a lawyer right now. So just imagine, you
pick up something in English and try to
read it. It's written by a lawyer, Usama.
You know, like, I understand that.
Oh, yeah. Not a lawyer. Yes, me. Yes,
me left. That's me as a lawyer.
Right? Legalese is hard for us to follow.
So he's writing the legalese, he's talking about
tasolef and doing it. So it's very difficult.
The translation is a great translation. We'll get
it to you inshallah. I'll post it on
my Facebook blog or something from a guy
from England he did as a PhD it's
like amazing, but it's deep.
But it's nice, like,
and and it'll be a little different than
the order that we went through here. But
what did we talk about today? We talked
about attachments. Right? Talked about what's important. Talked
about wellness.
Talked about the heart, and how does the
science of the heart imagine that process. It
imagines it at first as wellness
being intrinsically tied to worship,
and worship is tied to sincerity, and we
ended up with sincerity.
And sincerity is based on what? I do
what pleases what I claim to want. It's
very simple. So remembrance,
worship,
balance,
fear,
hope.
Right? Avoiding extremes.
We talked about signs of being in a
Muslim cult, man. There's Muslim cults in America.
Be careful
because I've seen people come out of those
cults.
You know, it's it's it's powerful when you
say my religion is the truth,
but when people have bad experiences with the
truth, that can be debilitating.
And then he moves into talking about fear,
hope. Those two wings that help us stay
balanced, moderation,
avoiding extremism,
Then he talks about the purpose of worship
bringing us together, helping us find wholeness and
worship as an opportunity, rooting things and having
a relationship with Quran and sunnah. And then
he talks about how to engage the heart,
protect it from showing off. When people come
like, I I would leave prayer, but I
don't want people to think something about me.
Well, you're doing it for the
people.
I'm not gonna leave prayer because I don't
want people well, you're also doing that for
the people. So in sincerity, it's not to
do or
do or not to do for people. It's
to do or not to do for God
and not to see people. How do you
get to that point? How do I get
to that point? By understanding Allah's transcendence.
Everything else is secondary. Transcendent becomes what I
look at, what I'm focused on. I worship
God as though I what?
I see
him. As the Hudson, now you understand why
is this? Sending them up in the sand
to get and that doesn't mean I'm not
like, well, I don't feed my kids. Why?
Because I see God. That's some nonsense.
That's not what he means.
When I see God in life, I'm gonna
be more
active, more concerned, better person, more empathetic.
Who's not merciful doesn't receive mercy.
Be good as God was to you. So
he talks about how to repel that and
then at the bottom he gives this this
beautiful example
about
exposure
and being reclusive,
how those things leave that to God.
Next time, inshaAllah, we come back
he dedicates a portion of the text to
knowledge. It's very interesting because we live in
a time, especially here in America,
terms, terminology
are really like hotly contested.
So he talks about how terms are just
constructions and you give them constructions we should
be patient with each other. We should not
just like flip out. Someone says something inadvertently
wrong or someone is misinformed and they make
a mistake we amputate them from our lives.
No man,
People make mistakes. And then from there he
talks about what is sufism. His definition is
sufism. I can give it to you now
so it'll help you. He said, husto towaju
eat Allah is to turn to God in
a righteous way.
Meaning through Islam.
And then he talks about the community and
differences. How we work together. How we should
build, how we should respect differences, how we
should see different passions, not everybody wants to
do the same thing, not everybody's an activist,
not everybody's a scholar, not everybody's a saint,
not everybody's a fashion designer, not everybody's an
IT person, not everybody's community support,
customer service. Right? Everybody has a different role
play.
So he talks about how a true spiritual
saint
appreciates all that and sees it and says,
They don't feel insecure and threatened.
They feel
blessed
by all the people around them as being
blessings of Allah, seeing Allah, Yesen.
Close talking inshaAllah. We have to leave by
7, but I'm gonna turn the mic over
to
Busema,
who's not a lawyer.
Alright. So we can do, like what was
that, Lauren?
Alright. We got it. Alright. So we can
do a little q and a, and then
Injala will start the conclusion.
Now you guys can ask questions.
Yes, sir.
I mean, I think so he's saying about,
you know, the call out culture and how
people may
people may actually even be wrong. Right? They
may be really wrong or inadvertently wrong, but
usually that's rooted in not understanding, not knowing
for most people. So he's saying is there
like a better way? Yeah. Obviously, the best
way is to reach out to the person
and like know them. Like, I should know
someone.
Honestly, I when I think about conversion,
some of the stuff I experienced as an
early convert, it's incredible I'm still Muslim. Like,
first time I went to the mosque I
was told like why you dress this way?
Do you know how weird it is
to go to someone you don't know like,
on 14th Street right now in front of
busboys and you're like, yo, why you dressed
that way? And you don't even know them?
Hey, that's really weird, man.
Like, I was like, why is this dude
asking about why I'm dressed? He's like, brother,
you need to wear a thobe.
I was like, what's a thobe? He's like,
it's it's this long dress, man,
that you need to wear. So this brother
went in his car and gave me a
thobe. I went into the restroom,
put on thobe, and came home, and my
father was like, we gotta talk.
Like like,
he didn't know me. That created problems in
my house.
So the first thing is, like, I should
know the person unless it's, like, really egregious.
Right? That's different.
Like,
the kind of ratchet
trivial
things. Right?
I should know the person.
Then if I know the person, I know
how to get in touch with the person.
I know how to get in touch with
the person, I can contact them privately
and have a conversation.
Like the call out culture is needed at
times because
honestly our nonprofits don't give people a way
to find justice. Like that's why
some of that's happening.
People don't feel supported.
At the same time, the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasalam, when there was a man who was
drunk, came to his mosque
and people began in Sahih Bukhari in Germany
began to abuse this man verbally, call our
culture.
The prophet said,
don't help shaitan destroy him.
Like, is there redemption
for people in Islam?
So if I'm going to rebuke someone,
one of the foundations
usually
in Islamic activism
is there is a door of redemption.
When Abu Sufyan and his wife
did what they did, Abu Zubillah.
Allah still says in
the
Quran, If they truly repent and they truly
become better, they're Muslim.
Even though
they're bad people,
redemption is there for them.
I have a problem like
we may be rebuking people in a way
that goes beyond what religion is saying, man.
And
then we push them out.
And then we create that. I am.
You know, sister
in Virginia, I forgot her name,
who now become like ostracized and being ostracized
leads to like being an enemy and being
an enemy then it just continues to grow.
So I think first it's like, man I
should know people
and then have a conversation
and then like
establish some kind of understanding. Maybe I'm wrong
too. Like if I don't talk to them
I might be wrong.
So if I talk to them, I may
learn.
You know what I mean? I think that
personal that online sounds
weird.
No?
Talk to people. Eunice.
Salim. Really love that you're here.
You
got a job, bro. I got you. But
what I did is I can You should
talk to me first before you call me.
Even though
when it's just alone, it's simpler. But then
when it's like, when you come into a
group, with a blended family, you can come
into a place, it's very
that to them, and then but then on
the next day, when we showed up, it's
like, hey. You you belong here? And that's
like, it's strange. Like, I mean, my relationship
to a restaurant decided to either I'll give
a flip up. And then but then on
the next day, when we showed up, it's
like, hey. You you belong here? And that's
like, it's strange.
So we don't have to be all alike.
You know? If the lack is mercy, what
happened with so everything you say validate my
thought,
much
of a
message. But then but then I want to
make that for myself,
But they're not they're not as convenient to
get to. You know? So
it's it's it's not
but my my question will be,
you know, and it and it's different group
of people
all the time. And improving that, it's like,
it was like, how how am I gonna
keep doing this until they I think my
parents, not even children are grown. They have
to this have to be
It's always you're always so passionate. I'm done,
man. But tucked into what he said was
trying to manage a blended family.
You said it really quickly. Yeah. But I'm
in a blended family. Right? Where you go
to certain communities and you're 2 different
ethnicities.
Yeah. Yeah. So if I could just quickly
just I think I got what you're coming
with.
First of all, like,
the the word Ummah is the outcome of
the deliberate effort.
Umah isn't something that just happens like we
think that. We read Quran and hadith and
we think well the ummah was established so
we've been like ummah riding, community riding
since then. No.
Community
is an outcome of a deliberate
process.
Right?
That doesn't stop.
I honestly don't have a problem with people
creating
communities, third spaces, whatever the word is. Right.
If it's best for their iman.
And this becomes more tangled and you know
this, when you start having kids.
My daughter, my oldest daughter,
did not have to
did not know about race as a construction
until I sent her to a Muslim school.
She had no idea that she was like
mixed parents and she's Asian and why you
got straight hair and
That is something that she never encountered
in where how we raised her. Right. Public
school is a whole another beast.
But when she went
kindergarten
and 1st grade,
she got a hijab snatched off her head
and was made aware that racially,
she was different than other people.
And it was like the weirdest conversation I
have with 5 year old about race, like
critical race theory at 5.
And then a white day.
Right? So it's
weird, but then I just realized like I
just got to continue to work for what's
best.
I think the second thing is you got
to constantly remind people like this is not
a cult, this is not a group like
so I know in center DC from our
early inceptions like we say Masjid Mohammed is
our mosque.
1st hijra is our mosque.
We we didn't do taro'id. We don't replicate,
and correct me now if I'm wrong, we
don't replicate things that other institutions are already
doing. We want to partner with an institution.
So game night, we about that game night.
So
Eunice,
that's a struggle that's never gonna leave you
and never gonna stop. You're not gonna find
a perfect community. It will never happen.
It's impossible.
Right? It's not fun. I'm sorry to say
that.
But it's just the mechanisms and the makeup
of our community is so different.
It just demands resilience.
That's why the prophet said no one has
given anything better than resilience.
And number 3 is always be an ally
to what's right.
Like if you think, are you and I
got a bed? Talk to girls, man. That's
true. Like talk to women in the Muslim
community.
Like,
we are we're we're in the 1st class
lounge, bro. We're just complaining because the food
is cold.
No. Seriously. Right? So then be
be be a a I'm talking to myself.
Be an ally to people
as well. So I'm not only complaining about
the problem and being part of the problem.
And if I'm donating to nonprofits,
I'm not donating so I can have a
voice in my own personal agenda.
But if I if I know that people
aren't being treated well in this nonprofit, I'm
gonna say, listen. I've gave you $15,000
over the last year. I need to talk
to you about some stuff, man.
And if they're not gonna do it, then
I'm gonna support people who do do it.
That's nothing wrong
with it.