Suhaib Webb – Dawa & Its Conditions
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AI: Transcript ©
First of all, it's a pleasure to be
with you. It's been a long time.
Even in our days in Egypt,
we did a lot of good stuff together.
And, Fadu Soleiman is a very special guy,
you know. I remember one night in Egypt,
I had like serious chest pains. Crazy.
So I called him. He took me to
a cardiologist. You know? Like, remember that? In
the middle of the night.
Yeah. He took me to a cardiologist,
and they told me I was eating too
much,
on the.
That was like, those are good days, man.
Those are good days. So I've seen you
know, you see people speak, you don't really
know them. Right? You don't know who they
are, but I know,
Faldo, and I've known him for years and
his, like, just his love for Dawah. Like,
the introduction really didn't do him,
the justice
he deserves.
So, Baraklofiq,
someone who struggled and sacrificed,
you know, for the dawah.
It's a very rare person.
So it's nice to to be with you,
Barakal Afikum.
Secondly, thank you to the volunteers for putting
on the convention. It's not easy. May Allah
bless you and increase you.
People that you don't hear about, Al Akhfiya.
Right? The prophet said, you don't see them,
but if they're gone, you missed them. You
know? And so they're getting, like, rewards. They're
not able to even attend
the lessons. They're not able to be around,
you know,
the talks and the, and the instruction. So
they are sacrificing,
you know, a lot.
And may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
increase him
and bless
him. So what I wanna talk about are,
sort of 3 things. The first
is, the importance of dua.
Number 2 is the
responsibility
of dua.
And then number 3, what are the conditions
as outlined in the Quran for dawah?
So the first, the importance of dawah
can be found, for example, in.
That individual who is unknown,
who ran from the other side of the
city.
This individual, we don't even know who he
is.
And so he comes to help the messengers,
but he himself is not a messenger, like
that's agreed upon. He's not a messenger of
Allah.
And then he says to his people,
follow, you must follow
the messengers
because these people were so bad
that Allah sent them more than 1 messenger.
Like how bad were they, subhanAllah?
Like more than 1
prophet. That's why they say like, perhaps this
is one of the worst times because
Allah didn't send humanity prophets, he sent them
you,
1,800,000,000
of us to remind people of Allah.
So he
he says, like, follow the messengers.
Follow those who do not seek
any recompense from you.
And we know, like,
they kill him.
He his
his religious freedoms are violated. His human rights
are violated. His dignity is violated. He's murdered
because he calls to the truth.
And then we know
from the the next few verses that
he actually speaks from the grave.
So in his grave, he's lamenting
about his people. He says, man, you know
I wish that my people
would know
how Allah has forgiven me,
and how Allah has honored me.
Ibn Abbas,
he said, and here's the importance of dawah.
He said that dawah was so important to
him
that he called them while he was alive,
and he wished he could have called them
after he died.
That's like tarbia.
Like in As Ustad Sheikh Fadar was saying,
like in any situation, Yusuf in the prison.
Sayyidina Yunus in the belly of the fish,
even Kathir says the fish begin to make
dhikr with him.
He was saying,
The fish were like dough. Okay.
So the fish started like they had like
a hadra, you know, in the ocean.
So
So the point is the fish started making
vicker,
you know, with him. He's making dawah
in the ocean.
So there we learn just from 2 like
examples of the Quran, the importance of dawah,
and then the statement of Sayedal Aqwan, the
prophet salallahu alaihi wasalam as related by Imam
Matir Midi.
He said you must call to the good,
you must forbid the evil,
or I fear that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
will send,
scourge upon you,
and you will make dua and he will
not answer your duas.
We also know from the hadith of Sahih
Muslim that the end of the hour will
not start until Allah's name is no longer
mentioned.
That means that there's no one making dhikr,
there's no one mentioning Allah. And dhikr is
the easiest form of worship.
The purpose of creation
is worship.
So when the purpose of creation stops
then the hour will start.
So he said Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam Alataqul Musa'a,
the hour will not start
until Allah's name is not mentioned.
And Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says to the
Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam, how would we punish
them? Wa antafihib
And you are amongst them. Why? Because of
course the Prophet is Barakah
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, but also nobody can remember
and call to Allah more than the messenger
of Allah. So we understand here like dawah
is a way to repel punishment and adab.
So all of these texts
direct us to the importance of dawah.
The second question then is who is responsible
for dawah?
Allah says after
Let there be and there's 2 ways to
understand this verse.
Let there be from some of you
a community
who will call to the good
and forbid the evil.
This is the opinion of Imam al Zal
Maqshari,
the writer about Kashaf.
But
the Sunni oriented scholars like Imam al Sam'ani,
they respond and they say, no, here,
min is used for emphasis,
to emphasize.
Like fajstan I boo,
you should leave some of of the ridges.
You should leave all the ridges.
Like leave some of the ridges.
Does it mean like you can worship some
idols not other idols? It's not what it
means. It's here for emphasis. Don't say haraf
harafuziyada
also if you speak Arabic. Nothing is ziyada
in the Quran. Everything in the Quran, it
has a reason.
So you have for tawkid.
So don't say like, oh, this is just
an addition. No. It has a meaning. The
meaning is to emphasize. So the other opinion
amongst, like, the sunnah in general, although they
differ also, is
means to emphasize.
Like, there has to be from amongst you.
Then there's a third opinion which actually makes
sense.
And we say,
in the Maliki school in particular and the
Shafi'i in the Hanabula, not the Hanafis.
The writer of Maraqis Sur'ud Saqom in Usulufil.
He said, if you can make different opinions
work, that's obligatory.
Scholars were worried about harmony and cohesion.
Now TikTok, Ox, and Instagram, Muftis, they wanna
divide you. YouTube, Auliya, they wanna divide you.
That's the sign of a irresponsible teacher.
There are certain things we can be divided
on. That's the majority of things. There are
a few things that we, of course, we
don't divide over.
But to see someone always invested in dividing
the Muslims amongst themselves, Imam al Ghazari said,
if you see someone like this, you should
run from them.
Imam Masuki said all of my students succeeded
except those who started by learning all the
differences.
Because we should push in to a sense
of maturity
before we differ. That's why in the Azhar,
I remember one time there were these students
arguing over some issue and there was an
older student who said, you must be 1st
year students.
He said, why? Because he said, 1st year
students talk more than graduate students.
Because your immaturity
doesn't allow you to regulate your emotions.
So you're just like a wreck.
So be careful of people, imam ibn Taymiyyah
Rahimullah,
he wrote an entire essay on this called
Risatul Ulfa,
The essay to bring unity.
He says like be careful of people who
always wanna rip people apart, destroy the Muslims.
Like as one convert he told me, I've
never seen anyone hate themselves online like Muslims.
It's like SubhanAllah, the way they hate each
other, it's it's
it's it's a problem.
So the 3rd opinion actually is that we
can make both of these opinions work, and
that's what we should try to do. This
is obligatory in the Madiki school if possible,
and the Hanbali and the Sha'afi.
The Hanafis also use it but in a
different way.
And that is that we can say that
what imam
the some of you means if you're qualified,
like some of you who are qualified.
The other school also who says it means
emphasis, they're not going to encourage someone who
doesn't know to make dua, so both of
them agreed that someone who knows has to
make dua. You understand my point, what I'm
saying? So Ming Kung, some of you means
those of you who know.
The other opinion that it's emphasis
emphasizing those of you who what?
Who know. So is there really a difference?
Say, khilaf lafi.
Just like a small difference.
So we can make we don't say this
one differs, this one differs, this one differs.
That's that's the sign of a shallow person.
Someone who understands they're gonna try to understand
the issue.
What is the mehadow mizah? What are they
really arguing about?
Why am I doing that? Because if I
didn't know, what would I tell you now?
So Maqshadi is wrong, Samani is wrong, this
is wrong, this is wrong. So the sign
of a stupid person
is that their dawah amongst the Muslims is
different
instead of unity and cohesion
Because any idiot can divide people.
It's easy to burn down a house, it's
hard to build a house.
And I just came from Andalus. I went
there twice in the summer. SubhanAllah. It was
so transformative. Andalus
is incredible.
Imagine the Muslims have been gone since 17/42
and still there's Izzah of Islam there. I
got in a Uber with a Spanish guy
with
start, you know, talking and he told me
I wish the Muslims never left.
He's a catholic Spanish man.
And I said, why? He said, you know,
the harmony and cohesion of society
is so beautiful.
So
if we take both opinions, actually, they agree
that someone who's qualified
has to make dawah. Someone that's not qualified
should learn
or know their place.
What is the evidence for this? The statement
of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam,
You have to relay on behalf of me
even if it's one verse.
To everybody.
The command
means
you have to do it.
So who has to make the dua
is someone who knows.
And knowledge has different levels.
For example, I wouldn't encourage
a PhD in the 'ulmul Kalam
to give dawah to youth in Toronto.
Because that individual is gonna talk about stuff,
they have no idea what he's talking about.
Al Hadith, Al Qiddam, Mal Baqah.
Right? They're gonna be like, what?
As I wouldn't encourage
someone who has a Twitch account
and plays
Assassin's Creed
a lot,
or someone who, you know, whatever they do
to go to Azhar and debate in
So now we understand each and every one
of us sorta has a role to play.
And like when I go to a community,
like, yeah, this is our youth director and
he's like 59.
What?
Like, how
you know? Like, how is that the youth?
Well, you know, they
they call me and then the people call
them youth, like, 80. So, yeah, you get
it now. Like, in their eyes, he's he's
a youth.
Right?
So
we have to appreciate that each and every
one of us has a role to play
based on what we know. So what that
means is we have to learn.
And we have to learn, I'll talk about
it, like, 8 sort of things.
Sheikh Hassan Al Attar with Sheikh Al Azhar.
He has a brilliant meta commentary on
of Imam Suki.
He has a beautiful statement. He says
He says, you know, like the evidences for
Allah's existence are like medications
that only a thorough
properly trained physician
should distribute.
Because if someone over medicates, and imam al
Shaltibi says this in Muwaffaqat,
they'll poison the liver.
If somebody under medicates, this is rafla,
they'll neglect the patient
and both will lead to the same problem
is an increase in the illness.
So the person involved in Dawah
should appreciate the fact
that
you have to be very deliberately careful,
and that it's it's an Amana.
How do I ease that fear? Because I
learned, I qualify myself.
And believe me, the dawah doesn't need us.
Like Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala will protect this
deen. We need the dua.
As Sheikh Fadun mentioned, it's better for you
than red buggaris.
Right?
You you give dua, it means Allah SubhanAllah,
Allah has tools, he can use them if
he wants to.
So when someone is used in Dawah, SubhanAllah
man, that's a great thing. Khayrullahkamalhamalhamalinaam,
as he mentioned the Hadith, and also the
hadith Mansan Nas Sunnah Hasanatan.
Whoever starts something good, whoever follows them will
receive. The guy I became took Shahadu. He
died during covid. He's getting all my hasanat,
man. Every everything I did that's good, he's
gonna get that and maybe
more.
So when people are accepting the dua from
you,
man, this is you're you're investing in something
that's gonna carry over beyond yourself.
That's why they say like the dua is
not a selfish person, subhanAllah.
And their reward is not a selfish reward.
I remember,
you know,
there was a girl that contacted me from
Toronto
about 5 years ago right before Ramadan,
and she told me, hello, mister Webb. So
you automatically know she's not Muslims. Like, hello,
mister Webb. Like, oh, hello, hi.
She's like, I'm 16. I'm in high school.
I was adopted. I live in Toronto. I
live in the 6.
Right? So she's hip.
I live in Toronto.
And
I think my family may have been Muslim,
but I'm not sure. But can I ask
you a question? She's like, is to see
the prophet in a dream a big deal?
I didn't say so I said, dang. Like,
who is this?
She said, because I saw him like 30
times.
I was like, then, Allah
So then now you became.
See, you became. Dravish. You lost the Salafi,
alhamdulillah.
So she,
she said to me, and he's he's hugging
me.
He comes to me and he hugs me.
And so then I was like, okay, because
Al Qadi Iyad says only 2 people can
see
So I said to her, describe him wallahi.
It was like she was reading the hadith
of Umabbat,
the face of the prophet, salAllahu alaihi wa
sallam. Like she asked, like, do you know
a Shamal? She's like, bro, I'm not Muslim,
bro. I'm a Shamal. I don't know what
it is. But she was describing his face,
alayhis salaam. So then I said, man, something
about you is special here. So let's dig
into it. So she said, okay, you know,
this this about me, this about me. She
called me. We had a conversation on instagram
and then, it was the 1st day of
Ramadan.
And so,
actually a few days before. And so she
sent me, she's have a piece of paper
from my adopted family that has this writing.
I don't I said please be Arabic man.
So I was like please be shajaratul
a'al.
Right? Let it be your family tree like,
please You Allah. So she sent it to
me, it was her family tree. She's
Hasaniya, man.
She's from the family of Sayna Imam al
Hassan.
So I said, now I know what your
dream means.
She said, what? I said, if your family
abandoned you, your grandfather came back to get
you.
And she took Shahada.
So don't think the dua needs us men.
We need the dua.
We are the ones who need the dua.
That takes us into what are the conditions
of the Dawah.
How do we
push in
properly? How do we what do we learn?
We find in the Quran the following conditions
and I'll keep it brief because this is
a broader conversation, and I heard this from
Sheikh Muhammad Al Hassan, Hadidu.
The first condition
Allah mentions in Surat al Yusuf, as he
talked about Surat al Yusuf, Allah says call
to the way
Say this is my way, I call to
Allah. So the first is Ikhlas,
to be sincere.
It's impossible for us to be completely sincere,
as the Al Khazali mentioned, because we're not
prophets. There'll always be some sort of
issue we struggle with because we're not prophets.
A Tim said, sincerity
should
not inflame
OCD.
At Tim said, sincerity should not lead to
compulsive behavior.
Just do your best.
Do for
Allah.
Say this is in my way.
So when you post something online, why?
Don't don't make it hard
but make it serious.
One of my teachers said that etiquette of
posting online to say Bismillah before you put
anything. And one of the, you know, youth
told me I'm not gonna post anything because
it's not that it's Bismillah compliant. It's good.
Dhikr means compliancy.
So Bismillah rahmanur Rahim and a malamalu binyat.
So I'm sincere
when I post things online, share something on
YouTube, do something alive, a TikTok, whatever,
I make sure it's for Allah. If I
teach for Allah, I speak for
Musa is asking for blessings. Why?
Not to magnify himself,
to magnify Allah.
And a sign of this is that you
don't have a problem being on social media
without all the makeup or fancy clothes or
the shea butter to give you the nor
brother or any of that. You can just
be who you are.
Be honest with people. Of course, you wanna
look presentable,
but be honest.
The second quality after Ikhlas,
Ara Basira is knowledge.
Imam Ahmed, he said knowledge here means 2
things, knowledge of Deen
and knowledge of the people you're talking to.
I understand who it is I'm engaging. I
understand who it is I'm talking to.
When I came back from Esar, I used
to give speeches a lot of Arabic.
People come to me like, what are you
doing, bro? I don't understand anything you're saying,
bro.
So obviously, there's a disconnect. It's good people
told me that. Till now, sometimes new Muslims
like, man, can you relax on all that
stuff, bro?
That's good. You need to hear that because
you need to it's not about you.
It's about serving.
So knowing the people,
knowing the deed. What does it mean to
know the deed? You should learn theology. You
should learn especially if you wanna get an
inner don't say, I'm just doing interfaith. If
you get into interfaith and you don't know
theology, you may lie on behalf of the
messenger of Allah. You may misrepresent
what is the teachings of Islam.
And and and you and when you learn
theology,
it forces you to take positions that may
be a little uncomfortable,
but you have to.
Same thing
in in Fiqh, you should learn how to
worship.
So Fiqh, Aqidah Fiqh, and Taskit and Nasrul
Tassoof
should work on your
heart. And you should be learning these 3
subjects, the hadith of jibreel until you die.
At my school, that's our whole curriculum is
focused on this, theology
theology
theology Then that leads to activism because you
want what kind of activism do we want?
Allah says in the Quran,
This is about Sayyidina Umar when he became
Muslim. We gave him a light to walk
amongst the people. He walked amongst the people
with light, means knowledge.
He's informed. And when you have knowledge, and
he can tell you this, when you have
knowledge and you engage in dawah, you're more
confident. You can push in.
It's not well someone told me, I heard
from someone
or the, you know, the the 3rd person
passive part of simple stuff. Stop it. You
should be able to say,
I heard from this. I heard from this,
this, this, this, this.
I give a simple example, everyone now, MSA
is arguing about lowering the gaze.
If they just read the hadith of the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, they'll know the the
answer to lowering the gaze between two extremes.
Because the 2 greatest narrations about the prophet's
face are narrator narrated by who? Women.
Let that sink in.
If it was completely haram for them to
look at a man's face, would those hadith
exist?
And well, what Hari Sahih Yeshayr.
So the point is, you wanna learn
largely as someone involved in Da'wah, the deen
because you don't want your deen to be
based on imagination.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says
Quran Quran talks about the followers of Musa,
what was their problem? They didn't know their
book, they didn't know their tradition, they didn't
have training. So what did they have? A
mania. This is what I think it is,
this is what I think it is, this
is what I think it is, this is
Someone said someone said the sloppiness. You know
what? You find some academics in the Western
Academy who are not Muslims, but who are
very educated, they will say, Muslims do not
deserve their academic tradition because they don't take
care of it.
Because they don't know it. They take it
from memes.
They take it from like
Instagram lives.
Just good to be inspired.
There's you can learn places like him, Instagram
live. You don't wanna be in a classroom
studying, man. You wanna learn your deen.
So that you remove the imagination
because that's Hawa.
Allah said don't follow your Hawa
and then you act
correctly. Then you wanna learn the people, you
want to talk with the people. Imam
Al Khatib al Baghdadi says that Imam Mzuri
and Adab al Mufti, when he would come
to Medina, he would sit with everyone. Women,
youth, and he would ask them, what's going
on? What's the latest things?
To inform himself as a as a scholar,
as a Mufti, he knows how to deal
with the people.
So the first is sincerity, the second is
knowledge. We have to do it quickly.
Is group work, jama'ah.
You have to be able to work with
people.
It's very easy to be your own
in dawah,
to have your own channel, to have your
own camera, because nobody is gonna challenge you.
But to be with the people forces you
to layer
yourself, and correct yourself,
and edit yourself.
The prophets mixed with the people.
Don't tell me you're giving Dawah in the
Masjid.
Tell me you're giving Dawah in the streets.
Don't tell me you're giving Dawah in the
zawiya. That's easy. Everyone there is already down.
But the to the people who need it
the most.
How do you do that? You have to
be
kind of layered and matured in a way
that you're able to function with different people.
The next was subhanAllah.
Quality is This
is
if you speak Arabic. It's a parenthetical sentence
that comes out of nowhere in the verse.
Why? To remind us to glorify Allah. So
you're taking care of your heart, you're praying,
you're worshiping at night, you're fasting, you're doing
things alone.
If you're online for an hour, you should
be on
Ikhlas for 2 hours
with Allah.
Make sure you're with Allah.
The last quality in this verse is we're
different than the disbelievers.
Meaning in our behavior, in our character, in
our language,
right? We don't we don't Now we see
political nomenclature, all muslims are regurgitating western political
nomenclature. I don't need this terminology.
I don't need to act like Tucker. I
don't need to act like AOC. I don't
need to No. I need to act like
Sayna Rasool Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam.
And if we begin to emulate the sunn
in the name of being conservative Muslims
or relaxed Muslims of non
tethered people, untethered from Islam,
we will continue to fail.
Because the khair is in
our community, alhamdulillah.
So
what are these conditions? And as I finish,
number 1,
sincerity. Number 2, knowledge of deen, knowledge of
the people I talk to. I shouldn't talk
to people I don't know. I need to
make sure maybe you see someone they're not,
they don't Why are you so upset? Maybe
they went through a bad experience. You should
know first before you talk to them,
before you try to correct them. The third
is group work,
to work in a group. That's why usras
are important, teaches you how to work in
a group. MSA is important, teach you how
to work in a group.
The first thing shaitan does when you go
to a masjid is, man, I hate this
masjid, I'm leaving. This is from shaitan.
Push through, push in. Think about Sayyidina Bilal's
first day in the masjid. You got a
stone put on his chest. Did he say
I'm leaving?
He said those were the best days of
my life
because I suffered for Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
And the last we said was,
last 2, spirituality, Ram Baniyah, Ram like spirituality.
And the last,
differentiating ourselves from the morals and the the
the negativity.
Not the good, the evil of disbelievers.
The rest are found in Surat Al Nahal,
in 2 different verses and 2 parts of
the Quran.
Is wisdom. Wisdom means doesn't always be to
be nice, wisdom means you know when to
be firm, you know when to be soft.
You You know when it's time to negotiate,
you know when it's not time to negotiate.
That's why you have to learn. And oftentimes
with the interface spaces, we see people negotiating
on issues which are not negotiable.
Sometimes we see MSA is negotiating on issues
which are not negotiable.
Like those are issues that you have to
take a stand on.
Because it's not about political utility. It's not
about popularity. It's about prophecy. It's a very
different type of responsibility. It's a prophetic responsibility.
And we have more trust in Allah than
we have in utility with with His creation.
After that, wala Mu'idatil
Hasana is and he he did great seminars
years ago, he still does it. How do
you present? How do you talk? How do
you bring an idea? In in the classical
system, we study mantak. Why do we study
Salam of Imam al Akhtari? Why? So we
know how to talk, we know how to
write, we know how to write fatwa, we
know how to discuss, we know how to
engage. Adabakhtilaf,
How do we push into discussions? How do
we think correctly? It's why we say,
Logic is to your mind what grammar is
to your tongue.
But for the masses, we don't want them
to study logic. It's hard but you have
great workshops like your workshop
on how do you present Islam.
And the last one after that,
is that when you walk into an argument,
you're prepared for
it. So you've done research.
So these are the conditions found in the
Quran of Dawah. The first, as I stop,
sincerely.
The second is knowledge of religion
and knowledge
of people. And knowledge of religion also means
I know the different method. I've seen people
do this a lot. They'll say this is
absolutely haram, but then the other 3 Mathayev
say it's halal, then you can't say that.
Imam al Zem Maqshari says that if you
don't know the opinions of other scholars,
you may push in and forbid something which
they didn't forbid, and so this is like
hulu.
Well then people will say, but then that
means I have to Yeah, yeah. Well, I
don't You have to learn.
Dawah is not just You just jump in
and start going crazy. Because for me as
a new muslim, I remember people wanted me
to use my passion as a new muslim,
as Dawah. But passion isn't isn't intelligence.
Passion is passion.
Then after that is group work. We work
together. It's important to be able to work
with other people. That's why prayer in jama'ah
is more.
And then I'm working on my heart. I'm
engaged in the adkar, al mathura to whatever,
you know, to whatever I can do to
work on myself, to be sincere, to be
alone with Allah,
and then to not engage. We're not talking
about the mubahat, the permissibility
or good things that non Muslims do. The
evil morality and character of non muslims should
try our best to distance ourselves from.
And then the last conditions, wisdom,
knowing how to present.
And that means like knowing the the culture
of the people you're around, how to talk,
how to present to them.
And then finally,
preparing my arguments.
Not just thinking I know, not just
imagining, I'm informed.