Suhaib Webb – Essentials of Islamic Faith Part Two
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AI: Transcript ©
Like, is there really a well thought out
strategy
that
will encourage people to come and stay,
and become part of the process of a
community?
In education,
is there an entry point that you've thought
about that you open up so that people
can come in?
Ya'aqoub said,
Right? Go in.
So as educators, and I worry,
about 5 years ago, I was teaching,
a classical text in Irvine, California. So, you
know, I have to give it the Irvine
vibe, you know. It's Irvine. And,
afterwards, a young student,
from
institution, religious institution,
came to me and he's like, you know,
I just don't I just don't appreciate how
you teach people.
I was like, mashallah. Thanks, man. How old
are you? He's like, I'm 20.
It's like, mashallah.
So I said why? He said, you know,
people need to come to us.
Like people should climb the mountain, man.
So I said to him, what if their
legs are broke?
He's like, what you
what if they have gangrene?
What if they can't climb that that mountain
that Allah blessed you to climb, man?
So then what will you do?
And then he didn't have an answer.
So I believe we really need to invest
educationally in
entry points for people. So we'll start with
1 inshallah. We'll just read a little bit,
then tomorrow we'll continue. So the first chapter
is very interesting, very important.
Sheikh Ahmed Darbir, what he wanted to do
with this book is encapsulate
those things which we have to believe.
And he represents
one school of Sunni Theology. There's 3 major
schools of Sunni Theology
throughout our history. And and these schools,
they're all basically gonna take you to,
San Francisco,
but some are gonna take 280,
some are gonna take 101, someone to Oakland
that went across the bridge.
But you still got where?
You still got to Oakland, to San Francisco.
And Sunni Theology, at its core,
tries to do 2 very remarkable things
that people should think about.
The first is, it tries to enhance
our
respect
and acknowledgement
of Allah's transcendence
of our Tawhid.
Laysa kamit lihi shay.
Walam yakullahu kufa 1
ahad.
So Sunni theology,
and we live now, there's a great book
out called The Domestication of Transcendence.
It's a very powerful book. Talks about how
language
Now you have, like, that guy's a god,
dude. No, he's not.
The domestication of the idea of transcendence
undermines,
the jalal of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and
their lieu of Allah. So Sunni theologians, regardless
of their
their madrassa that they came from,
one of their major focuses was on preserving
the sanctity and sacredness of God.
Even the Malaika,
they
immediately acknowledge the fact, like, hey, we recognize
your transcendence.
The second thing, and this is what makes
it remarkable,
is that they try to reinforce the notion
that having a viable,
meaningful,
consistent
relationship
with God
is possible.
So we call this in mantas is ishimal
nakhidin.
You brought together 2
opposite
components.
Allah is transcendence,
God is close to you.
Allah is unlike anything we know, but God
has your back.
And that was the challenge of Sunni Theology.
And the sheikh, he represents a school that's
unique
for a number of
reasons. This I'm not saying it's the best,
it's not my job. I don't I really
don't worry about this kind of things.
And that is that this school,
primarily,
as most of the early Islamic Sciences,
blossomed
in a multicultural
society,
where in fact,
Muslims
in their numbers were still a minority.
So, like, if you read at Mongkad I
was reading a Mongkad minamtulada today of Imam
al Ghazali on the plane. Figure if you
read anything on the plane after Quran, read
being saved from this guidance, you know.
Literally.
And Imam Al Hazali says something very interesting
in the introduction. He says, you know,
when I when I when I, you know,
grew up as a child,
He said, you know, as I grew up
as a child,
I noticed Jewish children, and Christian children, and
Medellin children.
What does it tell you about the neighborhood
of Imam al Ghazali?
Like, go to a deeper reading.
That means that Imam al Ghazali lived in
a multicultural
society.
He was surrounded by people who weren't just
Muslim.
He was surrounded by people from all kinds
of backgrounds.
Now, if you think
about that, then it becomes extremely interesting to
note that you're studying a form of synesthesiology
that in its infancy and as it blossomed
especially in Iraq
and in Egypt, full stop at that time,
and in Damascus.
Its primary
engagement
was with who
people of different religious traditions and backgrounds.
If you take that and think about where
you are now in America,
by no means is the Bay Area
monolithic when it comes to religion.
So, I feel that at times this approach
for theology
is fitting because its
growth comes through
some very similar circumstances
that we may find ourselves in today.
And because of that, the way they teach
is different.
And I'm gonna try to explain that to
you as we go through the text insha'Allah.
So, he begins and he says
the first obligation.
He
says,
So the first obligation
upon a mukhalaf, an obligation,
of course, is something that if we do
it with intention, we're rewarded.
If we don't do it,
we may be in trouble.
As Imam Al Haram says.
So it's like an obligation.
We learn something from the text that early
teachers
had priorities in teaching people.
Imam Sadiq Ahmad Zawook,
he says in Al Qawai, he said,
He said, you know,
understanding what's truly important
is the the constant
case of the seeker.
They understand priorities.
So the Sheik, he doesn't start with like
differences.
I remember I I I lived here,
and I remember one time,
one group came and taught Akita.
There's a weekend course here and my phone
start blowing up, you know. All kind of
questions from from some of our older older
community who never heard these things before. It's
okay, it's okay, don't worry that's no part
of our tradition.
And then the next week the complete opposite
of that madrasa came and taught Akita. 2
weeks later, it was like they're going back
and forth like trying to take over MCA,
man.
And And I remember after 2 weeks
of both courses,
I had a dear auntie, Masha'Allah.
She's over 70 so she gets the auntie,
you know, designation with Ijalal and Ihtiram, you
know.
She said to me, I think I left
Islam.
I was, like, what are you talking about?
Like, you're 70 years old, like, Masha'Allah.
How could you have let well, I owe
the 1st week. I agreed with what they
were saying, but the next week,
I found out what I agreed with was
wrong.
I don't know if I'm still Muslim.
So then I I talked to the brothers
at that time who were in charge of
the
the, what is it, the education committee here.
And I said like, is this really what
you wanna see happen to the community?
Like 70 year old people wondering if they're
still Muslim?
And then the brother told me, I didn't
know. I didn't even attend either of the
events. Subhanallah, where are you putting on events
you didn't even go to,
man? So the sheikh teaches us something, and
to be honest with you, those issues that
she had concerns with are not even from
the fundamentals of theology.
They're secondary issues.
Imam Subqee said,
all of my students succeeded
who
started their relationship with foundations,
foundational learning.
But the ego doesn't like to hear that,
man.
Like what are you learning? Oh, I'm just
learning the basics.
Nobody wants to say that.
We wanna say like, I'm studying this, I'm
studying that, I'm studying this hardcore book, blah
blah blah. When I was in Egypt, I
remember a brother came from America.
And this brother, subhanallah, he had not studied
before.
And I met him at the Azhar. I
said hey man, how are you? Teman, alhamdulillah.
I said what are you studying? He said
I'm studying Anwar al Buruk,
which is a book of Imam al Karafi.
It's 4 volumes.
It's hard man.
He said to me, what about you? I
said, yeah, they told me in 4 years
I can study that book you study, and
now you've been here 4 weeks.
This brother left Islam.
Not because of Khalafi,
but if you try to go into the
deep end, man,
and you don't know how to swim,
you're gonna sink.
And if there's ego in the knowledge
I've seen this in my own mistakes in
my own life, when there's ego in something
I set out to do when it comes
to religious knowledge,
it it doesn't it doesn't bring fruit.
It doesn't bring fruit.
So we learned something from Sheikh Ahmed Dardir.
Priorities.
Ask yourself right now, what are the top
four priorities
in your life?
We don't even like to think about it.
My father is 80 years old.
I said to him,
what are the top three priorities of your
life? He said, I'm too old to have
priorities.
So what does that mean?
I'm too young, man.
I said no.
But have you thought about how you wanna
die?
Shouldn't that be kinda like
number 1 on your list, bro?
Just take, like, 10:15
seconds.
Let's follow the example of this sheikh
who begins with priorities.
You know why a lot of people are
upset inside, man? And they feel a lot
of frustration inside? They don't have priorities.
Sayna Ali alaihis salam,
he said there are some people, they're like
branches. Wherever the wind blows, they just go
with the wind.
He said, but the believer
is also half of it.
They have priorities.
One of my teachers, he said, you'll truly
become a student of knowledge
when you're able to say, I can't study
that right now.
And then when you first go, I wanna
study this, I wanna study that, I wanna
study this, I wanna study that. You wanna
study everything.
It's like when you go to the gym,
you will do like full body workouts.
It's like, but when you're able to identify
what you can't study
because of priorities,
then you've become a student.
So take like 20 seconds.
That little voice inside us that we hate
to talk to.
And ask that voice like, what are the
3 or 4 most important priorities
in your
life?
So that's what the Sheikh does. He teaches
us.
So he says, Yejebhu alim makalef. It's a
big statement, man. And Yejebhu means it's constantly
an obligation.
He's he's eluding something.
It's not like an obligation once. It's not
an obligation twice. It's not an obligation like
for a weekend.
It's constant.
This obligation is constant. It never leaves you.
It always stays with you. It will always
be there with you.
Imam Shaikhari,
he said about this obligation,
it it will appear
when you need it
whether you recognize it or not.
So he says,
What do you think that first obligation is?
Okay.
Who else?
First obligation is Islam.
This is agreed upon by
85% of Suri scholars.
Majority.
First obligation.
Salah.
No.
But it's good track.
You're close?
Like, being honest.
Almost. Tawhid, almost.
They say all of those things are the
teaching
of this fardom.
All those things that you're missing are the
outcome of this.
They they can't happen without it. This becomes
really important, I teach in NYU with Imam
Khaled Latif, who's like, you should invite him.
He's freaking amazing, man.
And I get this question, especially when Bill
Maher was, like, attacking Islam,
saying Islam is a mother load of bad
ideas,
Islam is anti rational.
Islam, of course, disciplines rational,
rationale, but it's not anti rational.
Bad ideas, anti intellectual.
He says,
and the first obligation is to know.
Everybody got caught, everybody froze.
First obligation is to know.
That's your dean.
Now let's
take that to a personal level. Like, how
often am I,
like, learning, you know, at least once a
week, maybe listen to a podcast, maybe attending
halakha, or whatever I can do, reading a
book.
But then let's take this also to an
institution level.
How would that play out as a policy?
If we believe this is farda'ina farda kifay,
that means learning is individual
and communal, so that means I have to
be facilitating
the opportunity for people to ask questions, to
engage, to learn,
to study,
to challenge.
And he uses the word, marifa.
And that's important.
The word marifa
is from the word, arf. If you have
the book, tomorrow inshallah, you can take notes.
We made like super huge margins for you.
Marifa means
to follow. Arf o Faras
is the mane of the horse. Because when
you see the mane, you follow it, oh,
this is the horse.
So the ma'rifah of Allah
is that we learn about Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala.
We learn about certain qualities that we have
learned from prophets and sacred texts
about God,
and then we couple that with our experiences
in life. That's why he doesn't say he
says Maghifah.
Because marifa
is the joining of 2 things,
learning rules and principles, learning orthodoxy,
and living it, and experiencing it, and synthesizing
that together.
That's why the other word for is
always a word. Alf always means
something that tells you about something else. So
they call the peaks of a mountain, alf
aljibel. So to what? 7th chapter of the
Quran is called what? Surut?
Alraf.
Also, something that smells nice is called,
like a dog. I tell my students, say,
like a dog. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah.
It's easy. Little kids can remember.
Don't ask about dogs.
I'll give you a nice example of what
I mean marrying a cognitive engagement with a
physical engagement. This would flip Eric Erickson,
you know, in his grave.
And that is, if you wake up in
the morning,
you know, and you know that your husband
has cooked for you some incredible meal,
you say to yourself, wow.
Did my husband make
aloo paratha?
Wow. He knows that's my favorite.
Wait. Is it keema paratha?
Is it asid?
Is it
halal turkey bacon
and eggs and biscuits, if you're from Oklahoma?
So you're smelling it, araf too.
Because the outcome
of araf is hokum, and that hokum is
called marifa.
Mujudisheh
al mujudi.
Either I'm gonna affirm it or deny it.
So I'm smelling, I'm smelling, smelling, smelling.
Then as I get to the kitchen, man,
rice krispies.
Right?
So But that moment of meh, that's called
marifa.
The sheikh is saying the first obligation upon
a believer
is to do what they need to do
to have that moment with God,
To follow God.
So,
acquiring lenses by which we see our world
because we are in a world now, and
this is something I think as Muslims we
should talk about, the intellectual constructions
which formulate the goggles by which we look
at the world, can at times be problematic.
And perhaps also we learned from religious
folks,
things which also may be problematic.
So we would have to trust in God
for this process,
but he said the first obligation
is ma'ifa.
This book
tries to
attempt and has done so
the first half of the equation.
How do you think about God?
How do you think about prophets?
How do you think about angels? How do
you think about the hereafter?
There's something very different. It doesn't get into
all the arguments
because remember this book was the the style
of teaching, excuse me, not necessarily this text
was,
constructed
in a time where they were engaging non
Muslims. So you don't wanna start with non
Muslims and be like, you know, this hadith
is weak and you can't use this term,
that terms wrong, blah blah blah blah. What?
And also, it wanted to do something which
Islamic Theology does, and this is the 3rd
goal of Islamic Theology that I waited to
tell you till now.
We said the first is to recognize God's
transcendence,
the second is to have a relationship with
God,
and the third, and this is something that
we need to work on, is prepare us
for public
life.
To prepare us for engagement.
And I would say, in America,
large percentage
of Muslim communities
are not thinking about strategic engagement,
they're thinking about strategic
incubation,
and just hoping
I can make it.
But that's not how it works.
He says something else when we finish, Insha'Allah,
he uses the word Maqalaf.
The word Maqalaf means someone that's
burdened.
And this brings about something that we struggle
with as Muslims because we have to be
honest.
I think America's Muslims in many ways have
been
infected
by a Protestant message of the gospel of
prosperity.
We may not admit it, but it permeates
America.
American greatness is tied to God's happiness.
Whereas our theology says, you may be great
and God can hate you.
You may be the most
successful human being on the face of the
earth, and God is angry with you.
And you may be the poorest human being
on the face of the earth, and Allah
loves you.
The
the tethering
of theology
to material success
is one of the greatest challenges of this
age.
And Muslims aren't free of it.
So I said if you go look at,
I would say, 90% of the boards across
this country in our nonprofits,
they're all rich people.
Whereas you may have some Faqir,
you may have somebody who's not that rich,
but they know a lot about their craft
and they're in the Masjid regularly, and they
understand the policies of Masjid, they will never
have the opportunity to to be part of
the community.
What does that tell you about the community?
Why does the prophet mentioned
the Khutba
early on,
first moments of his message, a woman, a
slave,
a rich man, and a youth. Every demographic
of Mecca is with the prophet, the beginning
of his message, because he's for the people,
not just for one group of people.
But that notion,
and you see sometimes Muslims will say, you
know, I'm sick. God must hate me. No,
it doesn't.
The challenge
of
paradox. And that's why the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam said in the famous hadith of
Jibreel, to believe in Allah,
his angels,
his books, his messengers, then he did something
called tawkidlahi,
Watutmina
bil Qadrin. And
to believe
that whatever happens is from God, he emphasizes
the verb.
Because people, even Tanius said, are going to
have problems with Quran.
So before
we talk about being mukalaf,
there's one thing I need to say,
And that is, it is crucial
that if we are going to think about
Islamic theology
in America
critically,
then we have to emancipate it from the
clutches of white supremacy.
And we have to emancipate
it from different cultural groups within the Muslim
community.
Theology is not a culture.
Theology is doing our best
to believe and speak about God in truth,
and that truth refuses to accept white supremacy.
That proof that truth refuses to accept NQM
and people's party.
That truth refuses to accept pan Arabism.
It can
because
theology in its essence
is for God,
and that's why I'm gonna say something that
may challenge you.
The first step to emancipating
our faith
is to stop trying to speak in the
language of faith
using the language of the secular.
Because when we use the language of the
secular,
we subject
our faith to a logic which faith doesn't
align with.
And I'll give you some examples, you'll be
like, so weird.
And that's why we say
that belief in God
in its very essence
is an example
of super
irrationality.
People do not like to hear that.
You can say super rationality, I just wanna
mess with you.
Super irrationality.
I I I taught this to some college
students at NYU.
This girl, she raised her hand and she's
like, it's just, like, so refreshing. I can
just tell these people, look, man.
Part of faith is the acceptance of the
irrational.
Instead of trying to box faith in
and use a dialectic, which wasn't constructed for
faith in the first place, and then wonder
why I can't bang with these people. I
can't I can't jump out of the ring.
I gotta tap out
because you've boxed it into some constructions that
aren't made to engage faith in the first
place.
What do I mean?
Here's something you should try.
Ask someone
who is
submitted
to quote unquote
the dominant rationales of America. James Cone says
anything rational is subservient to something more powerful
than it. That's a reality.
Rationale tends to be dictated by people who
have money, and have access,
and can be the loudest in a society.
That's how it works.
That's why the prophet was called Majnun.
You're not rational.
But let's invert it. Let me show you
what I mean.
Let's take a a a simple post enlightenment
attitude,
postmodern
attitude,
if you will, and apply that to a
man who says, I was with my wife
one night in the desert,
and we needed some fire.
So I saw this fire,
I went to this tree, and started talking.
Said, you're a prophet.
What would be the
highly westernized
rationale
analysis
of Musa?
He's he's nice. Now you see how crazy
it is. We're trying to do that with
religion, but the other way around. We're trying
to speak
through faith
and subject the secular to face rationale. It
doesn't work, so the simple thing is to
say we just don't agree on this.
And we emancipate our theology to speak for
itself and to act as a cleansing agent
in society,
instead of always being boxed in.
I teach a class at NYU called Islamic
Law and Ethics. The original curriculum they gave
me was like, why we're not terrorists?
Why we don't hate women?
Why this? I said, I'm not teaching this.
I'm not gonna subject myself to your narrative.
So he said, okay, what are you gonna
teach? I said, from the Jenners to Jannah,
Islam and bioethics.
Jenners
to Jannah,
plastic surgery,
bioethics.
And they're like,
Islam talks about bioethics?
I was like,
yeah. The other class we did, from DJ
Khaled to Imam Khaled.
Is Islam a monolithic culture?
Our Shia scholar did Caravela and Black Lives
Matter.
And they were like, You know, we never
knew
that Islam
could speak to the age.
I said, because you never challenged it to
me.
And and and maybe the way we taught
it, we packed it nicely into the lunchbox
of the dominant narratives of society.
So before we start, there's one thing I
want us to think about,
Emancipating our theology
and allowing it to speak for itself. And
the best way that that happens,
as Ustadh Khurramurag
mentions, is to read the Quran as sincerely
as you can.
And without going to one extreme or the
other.
Sheikh, he says,
The Muqaddalif
is someone who's burdened. Paradox.
I remember when I became Muslim, man, they
were like, Islam is so fun,
so amazing,
so awesome. I was like, really? Yeah. Like,
so tomorrow
at 5:45 in the morning, you have to
wake up. I thought you said it was
fun.
The paradox.
But there are things that Allah has burdened
us with, which we may struggle to like.
That's acceptable in our theology.
That's part of our theology,
And the mokalef is the person who's burdened,
and there's 4 conditions I'm gonna mention that
will stop.
Number 1 is,
that someone should be physically mature.
This is very important,
have their physical ability
to perform the act.
Number 2,
maturation,
mental maturation.
The ability to understand,
to understand moral ideas,
to understand notions of philosophy.
We say that if one of those is
missing, and this is important because sometimes parents,
it's a parent's teens edition, they come to
me, they're like, you know, little Abdulah is
so smart, but he just can't stand. He's
like, you know, he's not strong, can't fast.
So we call
this half is there, half isn't there. So
we're merciful to that person.
We don't burden them.
On the other end, maybe somebody
is physically strong
and still very immature,
Not able to conceptualize
what God is asking, we say also this
is called,
a deficient form of responsibility. That's important because
I get this question all the time from
people. My son is like physically very strong,
my daughter's like machala very tall, but you
may have some challenges in understanding certain things.
This is called taklif nammas.
You can extend this to other issues that
we'll get in a second as before we
finish.
The set The third condition,
which also is extremely important,
is
that a person, and no one talks about
this,
has
good emotional and psychological health.
This is found in our texts.
Prophet Rufe Al Kalman Talata, pain is lifted
from 3 people.
And I'll give you an example. I was
in a community, wasn't this community. I have
to say that.
And there was an amazing sister, a comrade
sister Masha'Allah,
who
I used to see her after Salah. She
would stay in the liquor for like an
hour, man.
I was like, wow, Masha'Allah,
man. I'm so bad.
And she was a student at a very
very prominent university.
But then one day, I saw her crying.
So initially I thought, like,
wow, masha'allah, she's crying, like, woah.
But then I heard the cries of pain,
not like the cries of Khushur.
So I said to her, Assalamu alaikum, what's
going on? She's like, I don't know, am
I on am I on 23 or 25?
Like, what do you mean? She's like, I
I have a compulsive issue.
I was like, you don't see her every
day? Because, like,
you're from the awliya of Allah.
And she was like, no, man, I sit
here because I'm not sure how many I
counted.
This is someone who has a challenge,
cognitive challenge.
We talk about old people who have Alzheimer's.
Miss Yin is from the moshakat.
Right? I have people calling me saying, you
know, my father, my mother has Alzheimer's.
My father just prayed like 45 rakaat for
Maghrib, for example.
Or you prayed like 1 raka'at, like it's
okay, halazian.
Because we believe that if these ideas of
taqleef are challenged,
then people should be experiencing dispensation.
Thematic we we
differ
strongly with the shafis.
We say
that,
you know, you're not allowed to say your
intention
before prayer. You know, Malaysia, prayer in Malaysia,
Masha'allah, it's beautiful.
Malakis were like,
what was that? You know, we're very quiet.
But you find Imam Khaleel, it's great Malekic
Jewish said, except if someone
needs help remembering
what they're doing.
So in that situation,
it's commendable.
How can we take this idea of taqleef
and start to think about how do we
educate children in Islamic studies who have learning
challenges?
It's not even on the radar.
What kind of programming do we have for
converts
or for adults
who may have certain cognitive challenges or psychological
challenges or health challenges?
I give an example. I'm on the State
Council of North America.
It's really cool. I don't do anything. It's
a bunch of smart people. I just listen
to what they say.
But there was a sister,
she came to me. She was a young
sister. And she said to me and she
was weak.
And so what's wrong? She said, Imam, I
have been fasting for 5 days straight without
stopping.
I was like, what?
And she said to me,
I have chronic anorexia, man.
When I was little, my mother beat me
because she said I wasn't cute
and made me look at myself in the
mirror.
So when I fast,
I can't stop.
So I said,
are you in therapy?
She's like, hamdulillah. I was like, what is
your therapist saying? Therapist saying I shouldn't fast.
Drink some water.
What what what would make us make this
dispensation
is that her talif is nakas.
So how do we serve
instead of, like, embarrassing And Masha, I I
remember this is one of the first communities
I've ever seen that had a mentorship program
for people,
and had, like, proper mental health support services.
Like Allah bless this community, man.
First, I learned that from this wherever I
go, I'm like, yo, you gotta have clinicians,
have to have partnerships with clinicians, need to
be serving the real needs of the people.
Imams should not be counseling people or doing
these because we're not trained. We need counselors
ourselves.
But if we were to unpack the idea
of taqif here in the text
and expand it,
we can give people hope
who are struggling.
Right? We can think about creating much more
nuanced and caring services for our community.
And then number 3, we challenge ourselves to
think very differently about our religion.
But when we learn taqif, we just learned
this, this, this, this, okay, I'm Shelobot.
But the emotional health of people
is kept into consideration. That's why the Quran,
you have 2 kira'ah to only make it
complicated
for people.
Means they were affected by some external problem.
Qur means an Uhr,
internal
emotional trauma.
And
Allah removed
this from you,
and gave you
The last and we'll stop insha'Allah, condition of
Takkif
is that you heard the message properly.
Husbands,
don't take this and run with it, man.
I know how we do.
I didn't hear you. I didn't hear you.
You know, I didn't hear that. Alright. That's
how we get out of trouble.
And kids also. I didn't hear that.
No.
This is not a license to get me
in trouble with your parents
or your spouse.
But
Khali Abu Bakr ibn Arawi is a great
scholar. He's also a hilarious
student of a Vasari great Malik Hajiris from
Andalus.
He said, you know,
Bulu Vadawah,
people have had to heard the message.
And this takes us to a question I
think I get by more young people.
This is the 3rd most common question I
get from them.
The salvation
of people who never heard about Islam.
They ask him about this question all the
time,
and it's not necessarily that they have doubts,
they they have friends. Their friends are asking
them, like, so am I going to *?
Right? I'm your best friend. Go into *.
We play Fortnite together, dude. Go into *.
That's true. Just shot a pink bunny.
John Wicks can,
but
InshaAllah we're gonna have a Swiss National Fortnite
tournament. InshaAllah soon. Ming Dua.
Seriously?
But they get this question from their friends
a lot.
If we take the condition of taqleef that
someone has had to hear the message, and
Imam al Ghazali wrote an entire book on
what it means to hear the message. He
said, you have to be exposed to a
prophetic
level of immersion.
So it's not just like watching TV or,
you know, reading some article or Newsweek, you
know, Islam the threat of the West. Like
that doesn't count man.
But someone is, like, given
the access to prophetic
immersion.
Prophetic immersion means education,
concern, care, love.
Right? There's a sense of belonging.
And the hadith of the prophet, sallallahu alaihi
salam, the Sahih Muslim,
the Sahaba who cared about people. Said, You
Rasulullah,
what about those Bedouins who live so far
away, and like way out there in the
middle of nowhere?
Like what's gonna happen to them? Like the
message never reached them,
and the prophet said to them, you know
Allah will judge them by his Adal
and his Rahmah.
So we have an axiom, we say,
So we treat these people like like non
Muslims, like, we don't expect them to fast
Ramadan, we don't make them pray Fajr,
and we say their akhira
is known to Allah. Allah says,
So alhamdulillah, we only took just a very
brief introduction of the book, talking about kind
of the educational philosophy behind it. Tomorrow would
be a lot more simpler.
We have, like, I think over a 100
something people, Masha'Allah,
have, enrolled with their kids and stuff. And
couples. It's a cool thing to do together
because we challenge you to work together,
have discussions.
One of the things in the book says,
you know, ask your father to take you
to the graveyard and tell you about how
he's planning to die.
This is a conversation we should have with
our kids.
What what am I doing to make this
better for me?
Not what are you doing, what am I
doing? That unpacks a lot of
things that can be discussed by young people.
So InshaAllah, we will we'll start tomorrow, early
just to recap what we talked about. Said
the first obligation is to learn men's power.
What a religion.
So now someone starts to talk out the
side of their mouth in front of you
about your religion, you can say, wait a
minute. I heard this classical text, right? This
is like recognized by mainstream Islam. So the
first obligation
is to learn.
Secondly,
we talked about the idea
of
paradox.
The challenge of being a faithful person
is ultimately founded admitting that there is a
component of faith which is irrational.
A great example is, you worship God, you
don't see him.
Yumminulun bilhayb.
It's in the Quran,
a component.
And then the last thing that we talked
about was taqif.
And we gave these examples of being responsible,
right?
Physically able, mentally able, emotionally and psychologically
well that well off. And then having been
exposed to the message properly.
We'll take any questions you have for a
few minutes inshallah that we'll
we'll call it a night. Some of us
are on the East Coast time. If you're
interested in getting the text, by the way,
it's in the back and we can sign
it for
you
as
well. Inshallah.