Suhaib Webb – Essentials of Islamic Faith Part One
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AI: Transcript ©
We praise Allah.
We send peace and blessings upon
our beloved messenger, Muhammad,
upon his family and his companions
and those who follow them until the end
of time.
Brothers and sisters,
It's great to to be in the Bay
Area.
Of course, seeing many,
old
and young
and younger
friends,
who I've known for a number of years.
And it's always a pleasure,
to be back, in the MCA.
As you know, I came, to teach a
book that was written,
a little bit over a year ago,
with a number of
reasons in mind. So tonight, what I'll do
is share a little bit from the book,
and then tomorrow, the book is for sale
in the back, and we'll do, like, signing
and stuff afterwards.
But tomorrow, also,
we'll be teaching it in the morning
from 9:30 to 1:30.
We'll get as as much of it done
as we can,
Insha'Allah.
You know, I I mentioned
in the beginning of this text
a story that happened to me. And this
story has happened to me in different contexts,
but kind of a very similar
set of outcomes. And that is I found
myself
whether it was in my university days.
I took a course once in
the subject of the course with Islam.
Whether it was working
one time for AT and T.
And, you know, people asking questions about Islam.
Islam being a hot topic.
And even places like the subway,
sometimes New York City,
in need of my family,
I found myself
needing to,
if you will, suddenly become someone who's literate
or semi literate about Islam.
And luckily, hamdu li, I was trained,
right, to speak on these issues. So it
wasn't difficult for me. But early on in
my conversion, I mentioned in the opening of
this book
that I was driving from Kansas City to
Oklahoma City. And at that time, Pamela, I
had a 82 orange
Toyota Corolla.
Pamela,
What a car. I bought that car for
$250.
Can you believe it? It's Pamela.
And,
it was a great Jamat car. Like, anyone's
ever been on Jamat, you could knock like
40 days out, masha Allah, in one tank
of gas.
And
on the way back,
it was late at night. I was really
really sleepy,
and that car only had the 8 in
frequency.
The original radio is in that car, Supammer.
So
I started, like, skimming through
different,
radio stations. And I had been a Muslim
for about maybe 2 years.
So it's like 93, 94.
And
I get to the station
where this man is saying, you know, tonight
we're going to unpack and unveil Islam.
Like tonight, we're going to unpack and unveil
Islam. What is Islam?
And we're going to be joined by a
specialist
all the way from Egypt. So as I
was hearing that, I was like, oh, awesome,
man. It's like some Sheikh
from Egypt is gonna, like, break it down
for the, the corn belt.
And as I was,
you know, driving I realized that the person
that he had on was like an e
Egyptian evangelical
Christian
who was no friend of Islam to say
the least.
So they brought him on, They did not
ask him for his credentials. He was a
medical doctor.
And he just began to, like, hammer
us. Like, just, like, really
say some highly irresponsible
things to the point where
and for those of you who are millennials,
I'm gonna talk about something maybe you've never
heard of before. But there used to be
this phone that you'd find in the streets.
If you put coins in it,
it'd actually work. You'd call somebody for 75¢.
So I decided to pull over and use
something called a pay phone,
and get on the show. Because I was
like so angry, man. And I had luckily
been studying with my teacher at that time
for about a year.
So, like, I had enough
information
I felt to, like, box the guy, you
know. But the primary tool that I felt
I would use is, like, I'm William from
Oklahoma,
and I'm a Muslim.
Like, if you think about critical race theory,
this is like a KO punch to the
face.
So
I called and I got on. I said
my name is William. I didn't say I'm
Muslim. I didn't say any of that. I
was like, I'm William
from Oklahoma. I'm so incensed. I'm so angry.
I just I just gotta get on. Okay.
William from Oklahoma. Gonna put you on hold,
buddy.
And I sat down on hold, heard a
few country western songs and stuff,
and then I got on.
When I got on,
I realized he had actually misquoted a few
narrations
of our beloved messenger,
Muhammad salallahu alayhi wa sallam.
And
I said to him, you know, Hey, doctor.
I forgot his name.
Doctor, I forgot your name. How are you?
He's like, no, I'm fine. Great. You know,
I really, you know, was listening passionately to
what you had to say. But, like, I'm
William from Oklahoma.
And as a white American,
like, I'm Muslim,
and I converted to Islam
and, like, what you're saying is not true.
And he just exploded, man.
Like, he really exploded. And he got really
really angry. I was just making, like, vigor,
like, don't lose your cool, man. Don't fly
out of the ring. You know? Don't fly
out of the ring.
Although that wasn't that wasn't warranted, but this
that would this would have been warned.
So he started getting really upset.
And I said to him, you know, here,
this hadith that you mentioned, you know, Mirza
Nokati Danas, I was ordered to fight to
people.
And then he started interrupting me. And he
interrupted me so much that the talk show
host, I forgot who it was, he's probably
in the trunk cabinet now.
He
told him to stop interrupting me.
And then, like, they let me finish.
And then I said, you know, I would
encourage you in the future if you're going
to talk about any tradition, any religion, any
group, any ethnic group, any identity,
at least bring someone who can speak truly
to the subject.
And they asked me, okay. Well, who would
you advise us to invite? And I said,
doctor Jamal Badawi.
So then they said to me, okay, we're
gonna put you on hold. We're going to
get
this isn't in the book actually this part.
We're going to get doctor Jamal Badawi's information
from you,
and, like, we're gonna make it happen.
So I waited and they hung up on
me.
But I learned something that day,
as a new Muslim.
I learned something in my growth because
converting to Islam is very much about
a process of exploration.
You know, there's always, till this day, there's
new things that you uncover.
And that was like I was prepared to
go into that ballroom fight, man.
Like I was prepared to go into the
octagon.
And everyday,
just today,
SubhanAllah,
a a person messaged me on Instagram
saying that you know this rapper David Banner.
He's like a really really great rapper. He
has like incredible lyrical prowess.
But like he's saying things about Jesus
from a Christian
perspective,
and I I don't have
the raw material
to respond.
And I see this like every week almost
every day, especially young people.
People who come out of MSA because MSA
is like a cool social buzz, you know.
Like, it's really awesome. MSA is like a
great time. But oftentimes, you don't find people
in MSA going through like a proper system
of learning.
So the emotional component is there and that's
very important. But if we don't
couple
our passion
and our emotions
with raw material, that stuff burns out after
a while. Old folks, we can tell you.
After a while emotion
fades away and what lasts is like what
you really bring to the table. Because Muslims
in America
I really appreciate Doctor. Sherman Jackson.
He says that Muslims in America have to
stop playing checkers,
and they need to start playing chess.
And in order to do that, I have
to think about strategically
equipping myself
with the proper raw materials
to survive the intellectual onslaught
that's out there. Imam Ibn Taym said something
very profound about this.
He said people leave Islam for two reasons.
The first reason is desires.
Because desires
tend to make everything okay.
You know, like, the other night I was
doing this CrossFit workout with my trainer. And
he was like, congratulations you did like a
really good job. I was like, okay, Let's
get a big
pizza. Right? Because the desires
will suddenly make what you're not supposed to
do, like,
seem like it's good for you. And the
second thing he says that takes people out
of faith
is doubt.
And what I realized
growing up in Oklahoma,
being head of a youth group in Oklahoma,
being on an MSA,
serving as president of an MSA for a
while,
being an apprentice imam, coming here and, kind
of, being an apprentice imam,
is that people do not have avenues to
deal with their doubts and their questions.
And this is something that's systemic to the
whole community,
but especially
young people.
When I ask young people in America, how
would you describe your Sunday school?
Or how would you describe your Islamic studies
program? This is not, of course,
to tear down these efforts.
But we can always improve. Right? We can
always evaluate,
change, you know, make some improvements.
And one of the questions that I ask
is how would you describe, like, the experience
of Islamic studies
in America? And if I were to take
all of their answers,
there's one word for it,
curated.
It's like really curated.
It's manicured.
And I and I and I asked like,
what do you mean by it's curated?
Like, well, we never really had the opportunity
to ask questions that are meaningful to us.
And then secondly,
it's not organized.
It's like kind of free for all. And
when you couple that with
this massive expansion
of the opportunity to learn
online which is good,
but at times not organized.
It just kind of comp compounds this problem.
So
in in in noting that, I said,
perhaps we should
contribute
and try to translate some texts
that were classically taught.
I'm not someone who is a traditionalistic
person.
I I would consider myself someone who respects
the traditions,
the traditions
of Sunni Islam,
but I I don't think I'm traditionalistic.
What I mean by that is I think
the tradition
is a important bedrock that helps us keep
our feet in face of of the rivers
of modernity,
but I think also we have to contribute
our own tradition to the future.
I see within that also three problems.
Number 1, the set of neoliberal assumptions, especially
Muslims that have come through through liberal arts
and colleges
have towards the tradition of Islam. I'm talking
about Muslims,
not not Muslims. So when you talk sometimes
with Muslims,
they'll immediately start to rail against the tradition.
Right? They immediately start to scholars, the imams
as those are like some cabal of scholars
like, you know, in San Ramon in a
mountain somewhere.
Like, you know, changing the world, like, with
their hands on a globe
and Kanye with a hat on.
And then when you ask them, okay, so
what text have you ever read in the
tradition? They get really defensive.
But as you continue to push them, you
realize
they've never read even like a rudimentary text
in the tradition. Well, how can you be
critical
of something that you don't know? That's considered
a hawa.
The third the second are people who are
so traditionalistic,
and Vincent Lloyd is a brilliant Catholic theologian.
He says,
romanticizing
the tradition
is one of the greatest greatest strategies
of post modernity.
That and secularism as well. That I'm just
romanticizing
this ancient past where everything was perfect and
life was great. Good example is Spain.
You ask people, hey, what do you think
about Muslim Spain? Oh, Masha'Allah.
Muslim Spain was Well, if it was was
Masha'Allah, why is it gone?
And then you ask people to unpack the
history of Muslim Spain
and they're in for a great shock.
The reason
Spanish Muslims fell
is because they fought each other.
They killed each other.
And then the third are like the masses,
you know. People just like, I just wanna
raise my kids, dude.
I just wanna keep my marriage together.
I just wanna keep my conversion without, like,
losing all my friends.
I just wanna have a relationship
with Allah and some kind of dedication to
spiritual trajectory.
That's like the masses of the people.
So for that reason, I decided,
through
SWISS, which is Suheba Institute of Sacred Sciences,
to, like, take
classical texts that I had studied
with my background in education,
and to organize these in a way that
creates like a systematic opportunity
for at least being exposed
to orthodoxy
and exposed
to tradition.
I say that understanding that sometimes orthodoxy has
been negotiated, so don't don't get it twisted.
But at least people have an exposure to
the richness of our tradition. It would be
foolish for a community
to suddenly turn its back on 1400 years
of scholarship.
Like, that's just not a strategic move.
It would be foolish for a community also
to take scholarship that existed 800 years ago
and try to replicate that letter for letter.
Imam Iblomatik,
and Al Kholasa, it's a great book. He
said, you know,
people will always come and need to add
and change,
speak to, and tinker with, and and and
address new issues.
Imam Ibn Khaldun said
the worst thing that anyone ever said,
He said, like, the worst thing that was
ever said in our tradition is that early
scholars left nothing for later scholars to do.
That's a disaster.
So what I hope we can achieve is
through these texts is an exposure to the
tradition. But then I did something different.
I decided to take the questions that young
people sent me on Snapchat,
Instagram,
my website, parents would send me, and then
plug those into the book.
So that we don't simply, like, read a
classical book and then do the messaiil
al kadima. You know, the old questions that
were asked.
Because those questions really they have no no
relevance,
to us. But if we listen to our
generations, and especially young english speaking,
Muslims, tend not to have the opportunity
to engage in a reciprocal process of education.
As they said to me,
curated
and manicured.
Right?
Curated
and manicured. In other words,
the Islamic studies class has a lot of
concealer on it.
Has a lot of concealer on it. And
Al Azeri
Rahim
Muhuba, in his book Almonke as Milam Talayla,
he said that, you know,
that the purpose of knowledge
is to get to the root of issues,
and to align those issues
with the jalal of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
And imam al Mahdissi
also said the very same thing. He said
you find people
busy with Surah Ala'il,
with like, you know, the surface issues of
knowledge.
But the foundational fundamental issues,
they will neglect
and they will have rafla.
So my hope was to expose young people
in particular to,
a book that's recognized by our scholarly tradition
by mainstream Muslim scholars.
But then take the questions of those young
people
and plug them back into the book
so that I would have to work hard.
You know, I'll be honest with you. In
some of the classical systems, we're trained to
memorize text and to teach those texts without
really thinking.
So, for example, this is gonna be complicated,
but in
even
Ajay says,
You know, he said like this type of
verb is always Madzum. So, everybody that teaches
the book they'll say Madzum al Abada, Madzum
al Abada, but it's not the case.
Or for example, here's a funny one. He
says, walman Subayto Kham Sata Asha
said in his book that the signs of
nasp,
it's a grammatical
tense, are 15.
But if you actually count how many he
mentions,
he only mentions 14.
But nobody will stop and say, you know
we should change it because he made a
mistake. It's not hamstasha,
it's
arbatasha.
I've never seen anyone stop and correct it.
Why? They're just we're just trained to regurgitate.
But I believe, yes, the tradition is important
for giving us
orthodox foundations, especially in a time when there's
a lot of assumptions about our tradition. And
then secondly,
we have to take the issues that are
important
to people
we serve.
And that also forms us forces us to
reframe
the role of the celebrity imam,
or the sheikh,
or the imam,
or the content provider, or the sheikhah.
And that is you have to be someone
who doesn't speak at the people,
but just someone who speaks with the people.
So you understand
what they're going through.
Allah says
Allah says like we brought the Prophet up
from amongst you.
This is rhetoric.
It says the Prophet is in you, like,
fee means literally
inside you.
But of course that's impossible,
but what it means is
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, he knows you
so well,
and he's so invested in you that he's
able to speak to the issues
that are concerning.
It happens all the time. Have you ever
been to a Chodba and you're having
some challenge or success in your life,
and the katib
speaks to that issue. And you're like, man
this is such a good khutba.
Because it connects.
It it it appeals to you. But we've
all been to khutba's where we're told, this
person is like a really great scholar,
They have a tremendous amount of knowledge, and
then we sit and we listen.
I remember one of the first khobbas I
ever heard, and this is not to offend
Kyrie Irving cause we know the Celtics will
destroy the warriors insha'Allah.
This iteration of the Celtics, be it nillah
hita'ala, be it nillahi ta'ala will do it.
But,
I remember one of the first speeches I
ever heard was by a man who
vehemently argued that the earth was flat
as a convert.
And then I went home,
and my mom said to me, So, William,
what you learned today at your church?
I'm not gonna tell her:
Mom,
earth is flat.
And I remember I started to doubt myself,
like, maybe I'm not good enough
to understand
what this person is saying.
And that's a bad situation, man.
So
I believe that the key
really to our future in this country, one
component and this is not, like, gonna save
everything, of course.
I think a drop in the bucket of
our efforts to continue to grow
our communities
has to be an organized
curriculum
that focuses on middle schoolers and high schoolers,
and takes them from a to z, and
exposes them to people who are, number 1,
trained in Islamic Sciences,
and number 2,
ideally
have a background in education.
You have someone like that in the Bay
Area with Sheikha Maryam Amir.
Sheikha Maryam Amir,
master's degree in education,
Azharia,
Haifa the Quran.
So inshallah we're going to spend some time
on that
text,
and hopefully you'll enjoy it inshallah.
The book was written,
by a person named Sheikh Ahmed Dabdir. I've
aged since I left as you can tell.
No.
I have to wear glasses.
And, I I saw my son, he's like,
what are those?
I said, those are glasses. He said, what?
I said, I'm getting old, man.
Sheik Ahmed Dardir, he lived in Egypt around
200 years ago, and it's a very interesting
story. He he he goes through a crisis
as an educator.
He initially wrote a book called Al Kharida.
Al Kharida is this long poem. It's beautiful.
It's like really really beautiful amazing poem that
covers the foundations of theology
and the foundations of personal development, tasiyat, tasiyat,
tasiyat, and so on and so forth. But
he realized after he wrote Al Khari'bah,
that like the masses,
the common people
would not have access
to that text.
Like, the large amount of just day to
day Fala'oni
in
Masar, right?
They were not going to be able to
access the book. So he goes through this
kind of period of introspection
I heard from my teacher where he begins
to ask himself something which I think is
a very important question.
And he began to ask himself about
how do you educate
everybody?
What do you mean by everybody? That's impossible.
What he means is, like, common people man.
People that are working, people that have jobs,
people that have kids. He's like, I wrote
the first book for like Azahira, you know,
for people in Azhar. That's their life, they
that's what they do.
But what about like just normal people?
And this happened to me.
I consider
I want to write a book one day
about mosekirati
Bilqahira.
You know, my my days in Cairo.
There there were certain things that happened to
me there that are very impactful in my
life, mashallah.
But perhaps one of the most
impactful
was my last week,
in Egypt.
And of course this is when things are
starting to bubble, alhamdulillah.
And I went to Masjid
Al Azhar for the last time, and I
was wearing, you know, the Azhar gear because
my teacher there, if you didn't wear the
Azhar gear, you'd be in trouble.
So I wore, you know, the outfit
out of respect, and then he he wasn't
there yet. You know, the traffic in Cairo
is like, it's hot, it's rough.
It's like the 4:0:5, you know, 3 o'clock,
4:59
PM.
And
I was sitting there, and
in in that masjid there's this lady, she
brings tea for people. You gotta pay her,
but she brings tea. So she's like, yan
sun, you know, all this stuff. So she
came and she gave I got some tea
from her. So I was drinking tea, and
this old Egyptian amu, this cha cha, Egyptian
cha cha sab,
comes and sits in front of me.
And he says, salaam alaikum.
He's like, I wanna say something, I say
it. He's like, I ain't a sheikh.
Are you like a sheikh? I was like,
I'm
a student. He's like, really? But you dress
like a sheikh.
Said, no, this is like Crystal Tawhidah. You
know, it's like a long story.
He's like, la la,
I have a question. I was like, no,
I'm not that guy.
It's like, la, la, la, la. You're that
guy.
I said, khalasfalta.
So he said to me, you know, I
have a really difficult question.
But
before I ask you this question,
I have one condition.
I said, who is this guy right out
here? He's drinking my tea.
Said to me,
thank you man. He said to me,
thank you so much. Sorry about that.
So he said he said, you know,
don't answer me like a Sheik.
Said what?
Aidan,
Muqfin.
So I got like upset you know.
Disrespect to my crew man.
He said, yeah. Don't don't answer me like
a shaykh.
I said why? He said,
Kalem Laiyukal
Wallayyukan.
He's like, I don't understand these people, man.
I asked them a similar question, they start
I
don't know who these people are. They start
this person, this Sheikh, this imam, this scholar,
this
all these people.
I said, in my mind, I said, man,
this is how I've been trained to answer
questions.
2 years in dollar iftar, that's how we
answer questions.
So I said, okay, I'll try my best.
What's your question?
He said, why do we say
misha
Said, wow. What a sweet person. You know,
it's like a sweet person.
I said, what? He said, yeah, you know,
Min Shelly.
Where's the noon? It should be Minn Shari.
I
said, you know,
He said, la la, that's what I meant.
I don't want that. I don't want that.
I don't want that answer. I don't want
that.
This happens, subhanallah, in the mosque. I thought
I was being, like, punked or something, like,
MTV. It's like, what is going on?
And I said
so I got I got angry. I was
younger. I said, Hakka da New Zealand.
I said, man, that's how it was revealed.
He said,
Really? I said,
Yeah. Then he said, that's all I wanted
to know.
And he walked away.
I learned something man, that if you don't
make an effort to speak to people
and to listen to people,
then neither of you can touch each other.
And when we speak with each other, that's
emblematic of the fact that we actually care
about each other.
I speak at somebody, I don't have to
care about them. But when I know how
to speak with somebody,
then that means that I care. So
one of the kind of approaches of the
text was to try to speak with people.
So that they felt like that connection.
So we'll just take,
this part, but
Sheihachman Dardir had a very similar crisis.
He wrote the Chari'dah
and then after the Chari'ah, Habibi. After the
Chari'ah,
he realized
this book is not accessible to people,
So I'm gonna take this super, super, super
long poem,
and I'm just gonna write this.
It's like I'm gonna write this
with the people.
I wanna write this so that people
have access.
And that takes us to an important question
that not only should plague the mind of
educators
and content providers,
but also non profits
in America.
And that is, do you have a strategy
around entry points into your community?
Like, is there really a well thought out
strategy
that
will encourage people to come and stay?