Suhaib Webb – Juma Gems A Framework For Empathy (Part One)
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Assalamu alaykum. Welcome
to our weekly Friday reminder here at my
different social media outlets.
I pray for you. I pray that you're
blessed, that your iman is strong, that your
tears are removed and you are made happy.
That Allah is protecting your in laws, those
around you, and keep you strong and whole.
And I'm grateful
and thankful that you're here with me today
and appreciate you listening and feel free to
share, like and love whatever you feel is
comfortable and engage.
We are dealing with tremendous challenges globally,
nationally and communally, as well as in our
own homes.
And the Quran teaches us that there is
a very important
attribute which we can inject into these situations
that allows us to attain balance and
to
steer
things
to a better course.
First of all, none of us should be
surprised
that these things are happening in the world
around us because the world is fragile.
This is not Jannah.
This is not a place of permanence. That's
why Allah
when he talks about Jannah, he says to
Adam and his wife,
Uskoon
means to stay in a place so long
that you achieve Sakina. That's why it's from
the same word.
So the idea here is permanence,
that this is a place where you're going
to stay.
But when it comes to the dunya, the
word used in the Koran is like
Maashaara,
right? Somewhere that you're going to come and
go. You're not going to stay very long.
Allah
says
traverse the Earth. There's never
a sense that the dunya
is a permanent abode.
In fact, the opposite.
So whoever takes the dunya as a weapon,
whoever takes this temporary world as a permanent
abode
is truly, truly in trouble and may be
morally compromised.
But for the person who understands
what's with Allah last, this is a person
who's going to be able to be centered
on certain values that will protect him and
her from, as we say, selling out. May
Allah help us. Allah.
As Allah says in the Quran,
Allah has
Allah has purchased the lives of the believers
for the price of paradise
and the property of the believers and the
exchange in this deal
is Jannah.
So first, we should not be dismayed by
the challenges and difficulties and hardships of the
temporary world,
that it is what really what it is
built to do.
And that is so that we can return
and understand
our true purpose in life and our true
return is to Allah.
That's why also in the story of Adam
and his wife, Hawa, we
find both of you get out of Jannah
and all of you, including Adam and all
of their offspring because
Jannah
is truly our abode, truly our home.
What is that quality though that we can
interject in times like this? Number 1, to
remind people of Allah,
to steer people to Allah
And number 2, to hopefully bring some kind
of value in change
to the challenges that we face around us.
That is Rahmah,
mercy.
Before we talk about
mercy in the Quran
and begin to critically and constructively
engage
the usage of mercy in the Quran,
it's important that we define it because
Rahma is very subjective.
For example, you find within the early Christian
tradition,
people were unable and even some of the
early Jewish
scholars unable
to
rectify the idea of transcendent mercy with Allah's
anger.
So they skewed the anger like Clement, for
example,
They skewed the notion of God having any
anger
and
applied mercy in a way
that till this day and time, especially when
we talk about right wing and extreme Catholics,
certain evangelicals,
has given them immunity from sin
and thereby given them immunity from social responsibility.
That's the danger of theology when it loses
its balance.
That's why just this week, we saw a
Republican senator say
the goal of America is not democracy.
And a recent study came out where 50%
of people who claim to be Republican
have no problem undermining democracy if it's going
to preserve
Christian values.
The irony of that, it was the same
communities,
right wing Catholics like Robert Spencer and others,
and the evangelical community who for years
have been telling Americans that it is Muslims
who will translate their theology in a way
that allows them to gain political dominance
so they can mistreat whoever they want.
But oh, look how
the tables have turned, man.
In Islam, Rahma does not simply mean
that we get a free pass.
As one of the great scholars said that
the word Rahma is about bringing benefit.
And bringing benefit
implies 2 things.
Discipline,
discipline,
and forgiveness and mercy.
So the word rahma
sits between this incredible balance of fear and
hope.
Sincere repentance and turning back to Allah
and being reminded of *.
That's why Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala in Surqaaf
says,
Allah
said,
those who fear the most merciful how do
you fear? How do you have reverence
for the most merciful?
Now you see it's this balance. The idea
of mercy is not a free pass,
but the idea of mercy
allows us to settle
between fear and hope, social responsibility.
We don't have immunity from sin as Muslims.
We believe that we may be held accountable
for our sins and that eventually we will
be forgiven. And we ask Allah to forgive
us,
And at the same time, we are commanded
to live
a life which recognizes we're going to make
mistakes and turn to Allah
and seek his forgiveness.
One day, a Christian polemic asked me, who
guarantees you that you'll be forgiven?
I have the death of Jesus.
I said,
I have the God of Jesus.
I have the God of all creation
who says, my mercy permeates everything, and who
commands me to turn to him and promises
in his book
to forgive me. I do not need a
sacrifice
between me and God. I need to sincerely
turn to Allah
with no intermediaries.
What an emancipating religion
that by its
logical
outcomes
settles me between fear and hope. And this
is one of the beauties
of
not having idolatry in Islam. Idolatry allows people
to then
live a life which grants them some type
of immunity from responsibility.
In Islam, it's just us
and Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
What I would like us to do briefly
inshallah and I'm going to give the first
part today and the second part inshallah next
time
is to think about how the word rahma
is used in the Quran. It is one
of the words that has the most synonyms
in the Quranic
context.
And then allow us to think critically
about how this plays out in our own
life.
One of the challenges that we have with
contemporary Islamic studies within the Muslim community
is that it is more concerned about the
dead than it is the living.
It is more concerned about settling arguments that
have happened centuries ago
instead of answering the arguments that are in
front of our community now. And that's why
many of our young Muslim brothers and sisters
feel unserved,
unserved. They don't feel the rahma.
The first context we find that rahma is
used is of course the attribute of
Allah
He says in Surat Al Araf, verse 156,
my mercy transcends everything in verse
130
3, Allah is the rich, the one who
possesses transcendent mercy.
That means that everything Allah
does, there's mercy in it according to a
large percentage of Sunni theologians,
everything that Allah has done has wisdom.
Now let's think critically in our lives.
Are we at war
with the Qada of Allah?
Are we displeased
and angered with what Allah has given us
to the point that we are unable to
see his mercy
as a Muslim community?
Is there any animosity
towards God?
That is a very, very serious question that
needs to be asked
because in for order, in order for us
to serve,
we have to be extensions of those who
have recognized Allah's rahmah,
and that's tough.
But oftentimes when I hear Muslims talk,
I get a sense of ungratefulness
and animosity
towards God
And that is rooted in the fact
that Muslims may think
that because they worship Allah, they get what
they want in this life, But that's not
how it works
because if we were given everything we wanted,
we would no longer be reliant on Allah
and then we will be corrupted.
So let us take a step back
and think about our lives.
Do I really, really find pleasure in
And what I mean by pleasure is not
to be pleased with evil. We are commanded
to to dislike evil, not to be pleased
with the pain of others. This is no
one is calling to that,
but to trust
the umbrella of Allah's transcendent wisdom and mercy
in all affairs
and at time to suspend it and say,
listen,
this is harsh. This is difficult.
It's tough.
I suspend it all to Allah.
The second is prophethood
and revelation.
Allah says,
Do they dispense rahma? Here rahma means nabooah,
prophet.
Allah chooses for his mercy who he wants,
meaning prophethood.
Calls the Quran.
The Quran is so important as urhamma, look
where Allah places it.
After mentioning his transcendent mercy, the first thing
he mentions is the Quran
and then
and then the creation of humanity.
Because without the Quran, we will fail to
achieve the true calling of what it means
to be human. So the blessing of the
Quran comes first.
Is there animosity
in our hearts towards the Quran
and towards the sunnah,
a salient,
subtle
form of animosity where we dismiss it
and we begin to condition and regulate the
role of the Quran
to only certain aspects of our life while
Allah says
my entire life and my entire death is
for Allah. How
can
cure that?
Number 1, it perhaps is related to bad
teachers,
teachers who were harsh, abusive,
rude,
and I want to encourage those teachers who
are engaging in this type of behavior,
you need to fear Allah.
If you are physically abusing your students,
you need to fear Allah.
If you are sexually abusing your students,
you need to fear Allah and know that
Allah's punishment is strong. You're not exempt
by your knowledge from responsibility.
Was subhanallah.
Or is it our parents? Oftentimes, I receive
questions from young Muslims about Islam that And
so we're going to be doing that. And
so we're going to be doing that. And
so we're going to be doing that. And
so we're going to be doing that.
Being popular
doesn't equate to religious training.
Being popular and charismatic doesn't equate
to having knowledge.
Being someone's relative
does not equate to having knowledge.
So as I unpack the source of the
answer, I find that it's often coming
from a caregiver,
from a parent,
from a sibling,
or from a source
which is extremely
acutely,
acutely undertrained
and highly irresponsible.
So perhaps I need to pull back from
those experiences.
There is a sense of trauma
that people have, and Rahma comes when there's
trauma.
Mercy comes. We're a traumatized ummah. It's a
traumatized world.
We need to give people the opportunity
to rehabilitate themselves
from having bad experiences, whether emotionally, physically, or
intellectually
with,
quote unquote, religious teachers.
Someone that's been abused while learning the Quran
is going to have challenges engaging the Quran.
We need to be there to help these
people rehabilitate
people that have been
assaulted or physically abused
by teachers of the sunnah.
And this is domestic violence
awareness month.
We have to think about how do we
as institutions
allow people to heal
and then individually take responsibility
for my own healing.
So next week, we're going to continue talking
about
the different usages of the word rahma.
Facing a traumatized world, we as a community
need to be able to inject Rahmah
into those situations
so that we can properly fulfill our responsibility
to the Prophet
into our Lord, into the Quran.
We ask Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala to increase
us in Rahmah.
We ask Allah to allow us to forgive
ourselves. Many of us have trouble forgiving ourselves
and to forgive others
and to turn to Allah
and reignite our relationship with Allah
and to see the good. And while Allah
has given,
We ask Allah to help us to do
the same with the teachings of the Messenger
of Allah
and the Quran, which Allah sent.