Suhaib Webb – How Guidance Came to Me & Transformative Communities
AI: Summary ©
The importance of shaping America to support black people and shaping the country to support black people is emphasized in the segment. The speaker discusses the shaping of America to support black people, including shaping the body of the Prophet, shaping the shaping of the country to support black people, and shaping the shaping of the world to support black people. The importance of shaping the body of the Prophet, shaping the shaping of the country, and shaping the world is emphasized.
AI: Summary ©
I seek refuge in Allah, the All-Hearing,
the All-Knowing, from the accursed Satan.
In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious,
the Most Merciful.
All praise is due to Allah, the Lord
of the worlds, and there is no right
or wrong against the wrongdoers.
And peace and blessings be upon our Master
Muhammad, the Seal of the Prophets and Messengers,
and upon his family and companions.
We praise Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in
abundant praise.
We send peace and blessings upon our beloved
Messenger Muhammad salallahu alayhi wasalam, the family of
Sayyidina Muhammad salallahu alayhi wasalam, his companions, and
those who follow them until the end of
time.
As-salamu alaykum to everybody.
Alhamdulillah, when Imam Jihad, I think it was
like late one night, burning the midnight oil,
asked me, are you interested in coming to
Islah?
I didn't even look at my calendar.
I just said I'm already there.
For those of you who don't know, I
became Muslim through the community of Imam Jamil,
through Shaykh Abdul Rahman Al-Basir, from Marcy
Avenue, Brooklyn, who died just two years ago,
may Allah accept him, when I was walking
in a swap meet, not in Compton, but
the swap meet in Oklahoma.
And I was flamed up.
If you know what that means, you know
what that means.
Alhamdulillah, Allah has protected us from all the
flames.
And he grabbed me, and he had a
big turban and a thobe and some rubber
socks, you know.
And this is like 1990.
And he said to me like, you know,
in a certain type of lingo, how are
you doing?
I said, I'm good.
And he says, do you know who Allah
is?
I said, yeah, Allah is God of Muhammad.
He's like, no, Allah is the Lord of
everything.
And hence my journey.
I would go there every weekend and sell
mixtapes.
And he would grab me and just sit
with me for like two minutes, three minutes.
He said, you know, drop in science.
Drop in science.
And then eventually got into some trouble.
As my grandmother used to say, where you
did it is where you get it.
And immediately, as I sat in jail, as
a juvenile for a drive-by shooting, I
said, I got to go to that guy,
man.
I got to go to that guy.
That's the guy that has the answer to
this situation.
And crazy enough, the flame in Oklahoma City
was Inglewood Family Gangster and Pomona Piru 456.
Yeah, the Tariqa moves.
And I got out.
I called my father.
My father was old school.
I called him.
I said, I'm in jail.
He said, so what?
And then, you know, then you become like,
daddy.
You know, and he said to me, you
need to learn a lesson.
And I was actually in a tank with
all 107 Hoover and Roland 60s.
And I had on some red British Knights.
And I was a white boy.
Yeah.
So I took the pillowcase and hid my
shoes.
And then they said, that white boy is
the blood.
And I was like, no, man, I like
Garth Brooks, bruh.
You know?
And that next hour, they let me out
because I was a juvenile.
And I got out, and that was on
a Thursday.
I've never told this story.
My wife doesn't like me to tell these
stories.
Well, some of it's for a certain type
of family member.
And that Saturday, I went to him.
I said, man, I don't know what to
call you.
He said, call me Sheikh.
I said, Sheikh.
He said, Allah is working on you.
And that was very important to hear because
sometimes we forget that Allah is working on
us.
And he said, you need to go see
this other Sheikh named from St. Louis.
And I said, you mean Missouri?
You know, the Lou?
He said, no, Senegal.
So then he took me to see Sheikh
Ahmed.
And then a year and a half later,
I became Muslim.
And he said something to me.
He said, when I saw you three years
before we ever talked, I saw the light
of Islam in you.
And I said, why did you wait?
He said, you weren't ready.
And I said, so what did you do?
He said, I made dua for you.
And when you came, I saw that Allah
had answered my dua.
Why do I tell a story that I've
never told and my wife is going to
get mad at me.
This is like the lost tapes of Nas.
This is my lost tapes.
Is those of us who understand the work
of being with the people.
And those of us who understand, especially those
of us who embraced Islam or came out
of the first resurrection.
We don't see Islam as an abstraction.
We don't view Islam as a relic in
a museum.
We see Islam as an opportunity for constant
commitment and transformation.
And the word in Arabic for that is
Islah.
That's the word.
And Ahmed Shawqi, the great Egyptian poet, he
encapsulated this in one line talking about Sayyidina
Muhammad عليه السلام.
He said, Jesus, he by the will of
Allah brought the dead to life.
وَأَنْتَ أَحْيَيْتَ أَجْيَالَ مِنْ رُّمَمِ But you Muhammad
عليه السلام you brought generations to life with
iman.
You brought people from death to life.
You brought people from darkness to nur.
From Khalid bin Walid to Al-Hajj Malik
al-Shabazz.
You brought people from kufr to iman.
And that's the greatest form of that Allah
thinks we can give is to go into
places that no one else will go and
to remind people Allah is working in your
life.
One day I lived in New York City,
as she mentioned, I was walking in the
park and this guy came up to me
and he was selling fake wheat.
I don't know why he tried to sell
it to me.
I don't look like that type of person.
I mean, I don't think so.
Imam Khalid Latif used to make fun of
me.
He said, why everybody try to sell you
drugs, man?
I sat down with him and he was
older than me and I said to him
you know, you're created for more than this.
He said, what do you mean?
I said, can you imagine if you were
calling people to Allah?
I mean, you can even sell them fake
wheat and they come back and buy it
again.
That means that you have a gift.
A prophetic gift of persuasion.
And I said, imagine if you took this
talent and did good with it for Allah.
And he told me, you're the first person
that talked to me like this since 1977.
This is in 2020.
I've been in situations where I've seen people
come from those difficult circumstances.
Oklahoma, half of Oklahoma is on welfare.
And seen the transformative power of Islam.
If you want to see the miracle of
Islam go to Islah.
If you want to see the miracle of
Islam go to Masjid Taqwa.
If you want to see the miracle of
Islam go to Masjid al-Islam in Atlanta,
Georgia.
And if you want to see the miracle
of Islam say La ilaha illallah.
The fact that you can say that on
Saturday night in Los Angeles that instead of
going to the Sunset Strip you're on Surat
al-Mustaqim is the greatest miracle of the
truth of Islam.
That in spite of ourselves Allah has kept
us from what we like.
يَحُولُ بَيْنَ الْمَرْءِ وَقَلْبِ But Allah has soldiers.
وَمَا يَعْلَمُ جَنُودَ رَبِّكَ إِلَّا هُوَ And no
one knows the soldiers of Allah but Allah.
As I finish I want to talk about
the idea of Hamd.
Praise.
Because these young people this evocative nasheed reminding
us that the Prophet used to say الحمد
لله على كل حال ونعوذ بالله من حال
أهل النار كما رواه ترمذي We say Alhamdulillah
for everything and we seek refuge in Allah
from being in the Ahwal of the people
of *.
There are four levels of living a life
of Hamd.
That's why Abu Hamad Al-Ghazali he mentions
in Manhaj Al-Abideen the last second to
the last quality of the faithful believer is
to live a life of Hamd.
And Allah opens up his book with Alhamd.
Alhamdulillah Rabbil Alameen And the people in Jannah,
when they go in Jannah the first thing
they will say is what?
Not, I made it.
They're going to say Alhamdulillah الذي هدانا لهذا
وما كنا لنا هدري لولا أن هدانا الله.
Praise be to Allah who guided us to
this.
Without Allah we would have never made it
here.
The first is Hamd through connection to worship.
That never what's happening in the world around
me.
I don't make Ihsan of the dunya.
I'm not blinded by the dunya to the
point I can't see Allah.
I live in this world as though I
see Allah so I don't see the dunya.
It doesn't mean I neglect it.
But I'm not a slave of the dunya.
I'm the slave of the Lord of the
dunya.
I'm emancipated through Allah that I don't have
unhealthy attachments that keep me away from his
obedience.
So when it's time to drop, I drop.
When it's time to turn away from haram,
I turn away from haram.
When it's time to be right, I'm right.
When it's time to be just, I'm just
on the ibadah of Allah.
That's why Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A
'la says, Inna al-shirk la-dhulmun azeem.
The greatest oppression is shirk.
The second is with the community.
That I'm thankful for the ummah.
I'm thankful for my Muslim family.
Many of us, like myself, we have no
Muslim family in our own family.
I pleaded with my daddy on his deathbed,
come on daddy, just say shahada.
He said, well, you know, whatever, blah, blah,
blah.
I said, come on man, don't do that.
Many of us have been there at our
parents' deathbed.
Please say shahada.
And many of you were born with shahada.
Born with a silver crescent in your mouth.
Daddy, please.
He told me, son, I believe in Jesus.
So I believe in Jesus too.
I wouldn't stop.
He told me, you're going to cause me
to die soon.
Give me a break.
And I remember when my mother died.
Wallahi, my mother died.
No one knew.
20 seconds later, my phone rang with Dr.
Sherman Jackson.
I don't know how he knew.
You know what he said to me?
He didn't even say salam.
He said, you okay?
I said, nah, sheikh.
We called Dr. Jackson sheikh.
My mama just died.
How did you know to call me?
I said, I don't know, man.
I felt I needed to touch base with
you.
That type of bond is that we need,
especially as America works to divide us and
pull us apart and rip us into different
groups and that group bombs don't know Salafi
and Sufi.
The Islamophobes look at us like one ummah
and we try to fight them as a
divided ummah.
We'll never win.
So we have to appreciate each other.
Wa kun wa ibadallah, ikhwanah.
As the Prophet told us, be as one
family.
And a family helps each other.
A family forgives each other.
A family mends mistakes and celebrates successes and
supports each other financially.
The third quality, and I'll make it brief,
is we stand for justice.
To be Muslim is not to be selective
in the justice that we serve.
We are commanded, one of the few things
that is not restricted by time is kunu
qawwamina bilqist.
Constantly stand.
Sheikh Qaradawi told me, qist is more than
adal.
He told me, qist, la tu torjim.
The word qist in English can't be translated.
I said, why?
It means justice.
He said, no, no.
It's above justice.
It's a word unique to us.
It's a prophetic word.
That means we transcend even justice.
I said, Sheikh, that's deep.
He said, that's the Quran.
Justice isn't a certain time of day.
Justice isn't with a certain type of person.
You can't be Sufi and not have protests.
You can't be Sufi and upset with the
public execution of our imam.
You can't claim to be Salafi and you
don't care about black folks being publicly murdered
in this country because your aqidah is not
an abstraction.
Your aqidah is a responsibility.
And that responsibility, the Prophet will hold us
by our necks.
And that's why he said it's related by
Malik.
I will see some people that think they're
Muslims.
Come, come, come.
And the angels say, nah, nope.
You don't know what they changed after you
left.
That's not just aqidah and minhaj and where
your pants is and how long your beard
is.
Did you establish a hadara, a civilization, a
society that pushes for justice?
Khalifa.
The last and I'll keep it brief is
that hamd means to be strategic and what
we support.
America always watches black folks, excuse me, if
this comes across wrong.
But Elvis wasn't the first Elvis.
Elvis was a biter.
He was, as we say in the academy,
a cultural appropriator.
He was a cultural appropriator.
He was a biter.
You can explain what biter means to your
Generation Z later.
White America watches black folks and sees the
incredible ingenuity and intelligence and brilliance of black
folks and then that does what?
It becomes full-on vampire.
Whiteness.
Let me give whites a break.
Whiteness.
They call me a self-hating white man.
Tim Weiss of the Muslim Ummah.
What?
So wouldn't it make sense then that the
generators of culture, the generators of what will
be popular, the generators of what moves America
eventually, wouldn't it be wise to support those
communities first?
Wouldn't it be wise to put money into
the inner city where the light of Islam
can catch people before the evil of Kufr
snares them in?
If that's where America is eventually influenced by
large numbers, not only in the entertainment, that's
how they try to make it seem, but
there's more to this than just entertainment.
Brilliant academics, genius writers, incredible thinkers, scientists,
mathematicians, what did Malcolm say?
Most of the hustlers I knew, if they
learned math, they would be what?
They would win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Wouldn't it be smart then, instead of worrying
about living in the suburbs in a gated
community and having that model wide to support
the hack on Crenshaw and Inglewood amongst 107
Hoover.
No more rolling 60s, rolling Jannah.
That's strategic.
That's smart.
I'll tell a story.
I have a very different type of history
some of you may not know.
When I was my Senegalese sheikh who I
memorized the Quran with, he forced me to
go practice as an imam in a small
masjid.
I was terrified.
This masjid was in, like, the hood in
Oklahoma City, which is not really a hood
here, you know.
It's a rodeo.
But people at the rodeo are crazy.
I got a phone call from Brother Abu
Bakr, who was from Lime Street.
I knew him in high school.
He said, I'm not really an imam, I'm
just here, man, training.
He's like, no, no, they got your name,
imam.
I said, okay, fine, whatever.
He said, can you meet me at Park
Estates?
Anyone that was named Park Estates, you know
that is not the suburbs.
Park Estates, public housing.
Apartment 103.
It was 12 o'clock in the morning.
I knew that neighborhood, because that neighborhood belonged
to 107 Hoover.
I said, look, I haven't been Muslim that
long, you know, I show up, people may
remember me.
It could be weird.
He's like, wear a thobe and a kufi.
He said to me, because black folks love
Muslims.
He told me this.
He said, nobody will mess with you.
Wear a kufi and a thobe.
I said, all right.
Put on the biggest kufi I could find.
You know, big, flowing, Sudanese joint.
Went to Park Estates.
Walk in, and they're cooking crack.
Yeah.
Then I said, brother, where you got me?
He said, they want to take Shahada.
I said, what?
He said, I've been making dawah, man.
I might smoke primos, but I'm making dawah.
He said, subhanallah, only Islam can work like
this.
Then they said, is that him?
The white boy?
He said, something else I'm not going to
repeat here.
Something you eat with your salads.
I said, yeah, that's me.
He said, all right, sit down.
Where'd you go to school?
I said, John Marshall.
Oh, he's cool.
He went to John Marshall.
We good.
John Marshall's that kind of school.
Sat down, and they said to me, tell
us about Allah.
Tell me about, tell us about Allah.
Four of them.
And four of them took Shahada that night.
And they went from selling crack to marrying
a Moroccan sister.
He's happy.
Marrying in parking states, what I was talking
about.
Having kids.
My friend Lance that I went to high
school became Muslim that night.
He was there.
And another brother, he passed on.
May Allah accept him.
But when you support something like Islam, you're
not just supporting the abstraction of Islam.
You are supporting the light of Islam.
So I want to encourage all of you
tonight to strategically think about the importance of
the inner city as a generator of academic
as well as popular culture and the influence
that it has on broader America.
And see that as a prophetic responsibility.
May Allah give us the ability to be
Musliheen.
Because the word Islah does not imply just
being Salih.
That's Sulh.
I'm righteous in myself.
But Islah is the Muslih.
Not only is that person righteous, but they
are pushing for righteousness.
Holding people accountable like our brother Dr. Butch.
Holding people accountable for injustice.
Accountable for evil.
That's a prophetic position.
And that needs support.
May Allah bless all of you.
May Allah increase this community.
May Allah bless our Imam Jihad.
Barakallahu feekum.
As-salamu alaykum.