Suhaib Webb – Restorative Theology The PostPandemic Muslim
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AI: Transcript ©
Allahummasalli wa salamarihi filawareen wafil akhirim wafilamariilalalameen
You ayyuhalalazinaammarutaqallahuapatukati
We praise Allah
a blessed praise.
We send peace and blessings upon our beloved
messenger, Muhammad
and
upon the family of the prophet
Ummah of Sayna
Nabi Salam Al Ghazari in Minhaj al Abideen,
he locates one of the most important things
we can do
to be centered
and stationed
in a proper religious
way
and that is recognition of blessings.
Na'rifah
nam
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in the Quran
begins our relationship with Him
by us acknowledging His blessings upon us.
He says,
All praise is due to Allah alone,
the creator of all things.
And Allah who
challenges
us
to try to exhaust
our abilities
in counting his blessings in our lives.
When he says,
If you were to try to count
the blessings of Allah, you would be unable
to do so.
And that's very important because we live in
an age
which largely locates people in a perpetual state
of cynicism and melancholy.
One of the
goals
of the dunya
and shaitan
is to make us so sad
that we surrender our utility
to the dunya
and we allow what drives us intrinsically to
be
some things which are not very important to
us at all.
And that's why in Surat Al Rahman,
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
constantly repeats
the challenge for us to think about
what He has bestowed upon us.
Allah says I have showered blessings upon you.
SubhanAllah.
You are dripping. You are drenched
in nyam.
And then Surat Ar Rahman,
Allah says repeatedly,
Which blessing are you gonna deny?
I say that because we are coming now
to the home stretch
of this incredible month of Ramadan.
It's so powerful that the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam
when Sayyidina Jibreel is related by Imam Muslim,
he said
the loser is the one who fails to
be forgiven in this month.
The prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam affirmed that
supplication by saying aameel because it would be
almost impossible not to be forgiven in this
month. Someone would have to be deliberately trying
not
to
be
forgiven.
And this is the month of one of
the greatest blessings of Allah,
the
Quran. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says shahuuramadhanatleviunazilalfiil
Qur'an.
The month of Ramadan
in which was sent the Quran.
Hudalinas
as a guidance
and a clarifier.
While Quran,
inner criteria.
The prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
posited the Quran in our lives
as something that has to form
the macros of our existence.
When he said, Alaihi salatu wasalam
al Quran
hablullahi
mandoodum
minasama.
That the Quran is the rope of God
extending from the heavens.
Part of it is being upheld by Allah
and the other part is being held by
us.
That's why Sidi Imam al Shahl Tabi Herzl
Ma'ani he said,
That we have to
work with the Quran.
We have to do our part and hold
up
the rope of Allah.
As Allah says, wa atalsimu bihabalillahijami
cling to the book of Allah, the rope
of Allah.
One of the
mistakes
that we make
is we want the Barakah
without the harukah.
We want the Barakah
without the harukah.
We want the blessings of the Quran
without working with the Quran.
1 of my children asked me,
do you want me to complete
a Quran in the month of Ramadan?
I said no.
I want you to engage the Quran in
the month of Ramadan.
Allah sent this book for us to think
deeply about
and uncover
solutions
for the world we live in
not simply to be a community of barakah
without harakah. That's not how it works. That's
selfish.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says afda'ud billahi minashalaytanirurajeem
mismillayalayalrahmanumrahamimwalkitabilmubeen
Quran was sent for us to think
and he says,
Quran guides to something. What does it guide
to?
What's best?
So perhaps we should pull back for a
second
and not worry about the barakah
which is the act natural outcome
of the harakah,
acting on the Quran.
The topic of this brief hukba is going
to
amplify that idea
because we are coming into a very important
point in history
And Muslims are commanded by Allah
to learn lessons from the world around them
and where they are.
Allah said, look into yourselves.
Those who think about the creation of the
heavens and the earth.
Remember that remind them of the days of
Allah.
We're coming out of
a pandemic
which represents
the end of neo
global liberalism
and the birth
of new world orders,
new challenges,
reformatting
power,
the end of the colonial world as we
have known it,
the weakening of America.
Where are we in all of that?
So what I would like for us to
think about today
is our role as Muslims
after the pandemic.
Individually,
Let's not get to global narratives. Global narratives
are often an alibi not to act individually.
So I can talk all day long about
how the world is but my own house
is burning down.
I curse the dictators in Muslim countries, but
I'm a dictator at home. Then what's the
purpose?
Why do you say what you don't do?
The first
is where do we locate Islam?
Pandemics are nothing new. In the Amway period,
there were more than 20 pandemics
just in the Amway dynasty.
Some of the Sahaba that we know died
in plagues.
Abu Ubaidid Mujarah,
and Muhirub Nusharda.
Even the great great grand granddaughter of Saydah
Khadija
Khadija al Kubra
died in plagues.
Imam al Hafaf ibn Hajar
who dies
852 after hijri,
he lost 3 daughters to the to the
the European plight.
3.
He wrote a book, Ba'al ul Ma'oun fifatli
ta'oun. He wrote a book about it.
So this is not something new for us.
In fact,
even as Saqir, he said that there were
times in the Muslim world where the governors
of cities and villages would announce policy from
rooftops
to observe social distancing.
He mentions that there were universities where students
would sit
like, you know, under a balcony and be
separated and the teacher would
teach their lesson to them. This is nothing
new for us.
But how are we going to act coming
out of this moment?
Especially the American Muslim community which has sort
of
fallen off
track. The first is where do we locate
Islam?
In the face of a post colonial society,
Islam is a choice that's why the word
is Islam.
Mas
dariyani, a verbal noun. Islam
implies a choice, an option
that Allah has guided me to choose.
Allah has guided us to choose Islam
There's no compulsion to religion.
It is the only true religion. It is
the only religion that will be accepted by
Allah. In adina Indallahi Islam. That's what the
Quran
says.
It's very clear.
So do I locate Islam in my life
as something that I have willingly chosen?
Not something I'm frustrated about,
not something I'm angry about,
but something that I find incredible utility
in the hereafter
and joy as Allah says wabidharikafaliyahfrahu
let people rejoice with Islam
Or is it a source of English?
If it's a source of English, I need
to engage in what I would call restorative
theology.
Restoring myself.
Restoring my Islam.
The prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam has said,
manhasuna
Islam, that whoever
works on his or her Islam,
from that moment forward, the rewards of those
people will be magnified 700 times.
Another narration the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
said whoever works on his or her Islam
will be granted one of the highest places
in Jannah. So that's part of the that's
par for the course.
So that's number 1.
Let me tighten up my Islam.
My submission to Allah
is I submit to Allah.
That's why some of the ulama used to
say everyday I embrace Islam. Everyday
everyday I renew my shahara.
Muhammad Rasool Allah.
The second,
and this is perhaps one of the greatest
threats to and I want people to pay
attention to this,
The American Muslim community that it has been
uprooted
and has begin to identify itself
as a political community instead of a prophetic
community.
And we have to appreciate
what I'm about to say hopefully
and that is that neoconservatism
is the secularization
of religion
and liberalism
is the secularization
of sin. I'm gonna let that cook in
your minds. I'm not gonna explain it all.
You can dance with that, but think about
it.
Neo conservatism
is the sacralization
of theology.
Largely through the lens of white men.
Largely through the lens of an extension of
extension of the colonialist enterprise.
So even in the curtain of Taqua, there's
a trap.
Don't believe me?
Look at all the times that they tried
not to let us build mosques
in the name of religion.
It is the sacralization
of religion.
On the other end,
because if your imam is Joe Rogan, you're
in trouble.
If your imam is AOC, you're in trouble.
Our imam is Mohammed
and no one else. Not Jordan Peterson.
Or imamis Muhammad salallahu alaihi wasalam.
Not the leaders of the far right.
If you got played like that, you got
played bro. You fell for the okeydoke. You
know why? Because neoconservatism
and neoliberalism
both come from the same well of secularism.
You are secularizing inadvertently your theology or your
understanding of sin.
That's heavy but that's what it is.
How do I emancipate myself from that?
I take Muhammad salallahu alaihi wa sallam as
my prophet
and the Quran as my source of understanding
specifically terms
and words
and meanings.
Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala in Surat Abaqrah, the
theme of Surat Abaqrah is really the theme
of terms.
And that's how we should read the Quran,
not just for the barakah, bro, the harakah.
Quran
Makes my mind work, makes my brain work,
makes my heart move, makes my my actions
change.
Look insurahat the Baqarah,
Allah
says to those people in Madinah,
don't say Ra'ina. Ra'ina is not actually a
bad word,
but the way it was used had a
bad implication.
It was an insult to the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam. So even though it was
allowed
because its source was polluted we're not allowed
to use it.
Terms.
Look at the story of Say to Adam.
What's the first thing Allah teaches and equips
Adam with? The ability to know what things
are.
Allah teaches him the names of all things.
So what happens to the Muslim who replaces
religious nomenclature
with political nomenclature whether on the right or
the left they would be like Adam if
Allah had not taught him the names of
all things in this dunya
because the end game is the same.
You can continue. Look at shaytan.
The game of shaytan and * Bakhra is
a game of terminology
and nomenclature.
This is how we want to read the
Quran.
Al haraka before the baraka yamolen.
The actions before the blessings
the cart before the horse
but you know what that's that hard religion
bro
This brother is asking me to actually engage
and read the Quran
in a way where I'm fully invested.
Exactly.
Those who strive are rewarded.
Are we a community that locates the Quran
as our primary source of understanding things in
a general way?
Or are we just looking for specific blessings?
So what does Shaitan do? Allah says to
our parents don't come close to the tree.
You'll be
losers.
This is the first example of false advertisement
in history.
A bad influencer.
Shaitan is a bad influencer.
Wanna talk about etiquettes of being an influencer
on Instagram? We can talk about that in
the Quran. Everything is in the Quran, man.
But we're not giving it our time.
Shaitan is a bad influencer.
What does he say to our parents? Your
Lord prohibited you from this tree because he
knows
it will make you an angel or live
forever.
So Tabakar is a battle of terms and
meanings.
What are those disbelievers say? Riba
and
transactions are the same. A battle of terms.
That's the theme of Surat Baqarah.
Allah has commanded you to slaughter account. What
comes after this? Is it like this? Is
it like this? Is it like this? It's
a battle of the particulars. The whole theme
of the surah.
That's why the end of the chapter says
what? The guidance and the guidance of Allah.
So where do I locate myself now as
a Muslim? Am I someone who interprets Islam
through the praxis
and prism of politics
or do I interpret politics
through the praxis and prism of Islam?
That will tell me about where I am.
And that will tell me how I have
been relocated
and
realigned
by meta modernity
post pandemic
that I do not want to make a
todayun of SIASA.
I want to make SIASA of todayun
That will tell you everything about yourself and
myself.
I have a student in my child. He's
memorizing the Quran. He's doing really good.
But he's young, you know, when you young,
you hot, man. Got a lot of energy
and got babies and bills and diapers to
deal with.
So
I said to him he said do you
have a challenge for me this month of
Ramadan? I said oh, I got a challenge
but I'm gonna let you do it for
1 week.
1 week only.
He said, well, I said, it's hard, bro.
I tried to do it myself, and I
struggle with it. He said, oh, really? I
said, yeah. It's Jedi type stuff, bro.
What is it? I said, you are not
allowed to use any political nomenclature
to talk about Muslims.
Liberal or conservative
or none of that. None of that political
nomenclature.
Bleed it from your life.
So he came a week later,
he's reading and washed that nafir with Ijazan.
It's not easy to read. Tariq Al Azraq.
And I said,
how was your week, man?
He said, wallahi.
I couldn't talk to anybody.
I didn't post anything on social media.
I couldn't have conversations because I have been
so infected
by the climate of meta modernity. And one
of the goals of meta modernity
is to remove
the priority of religion
and replace it with the priority of whatever
is popular in the secular world.
So I said to him, then what did
you do this week? He said, I memorized
Quran and stayed quiet. I said, Masha'Allah.
What else you want?
He said, I became productive
but I realized I forgot religious term terminology.
I can no longer label people in a
nice way or as a pejorative
with religious terminology
because I forgot how to use it. And
maybe that's what's happening to us now as
American Muslims
get caught up in the cultural wars.
The last
is we wanna think about interdependencies
and coalition building
as key to
healing
a fractured world.
The cult of individualism is a relatively new
cult. It's only a 150 years old
but now
sociologists,
some peer reviewed works,
psychiatry and mental health are saying that loneliness
is one of the greatest causes of death
in America.
Go it alone man.
The word personality in Greek means mask.
Everyone's hyper focused on themselves.
And the prophet salallahu alaihi wasalam he warned
us about a time like this when he
said when you see everybody amazed at their
opinion.
Everybody amazed at what they have to say.
Everybody got an opinion.
But that's not how it works.
Anania,
hyper individualism
is the cult of this era.
So I'm willing to sacrifice what's really important
for things which are not.
First is our marriages.
Ask any of the OG's here today who've
been married for more than 30, 40 years.
They'll tell you that good marriages are the
outcome of hard work,
But if you watch the notebook,
you watch Bollywood,
you watch Musa Salat,
Love
is an easy thing. In Arabic, the word
for love is the same word as seed,
had been hope. Because I gotta plant it,
I got to grow it, I got to
parse it, I got to water it, I
got to make sure it gets the right
sunlight, I have to work on love.
So Islam
is extremely
cautious about individualism
and it amplifies
interdependencies
coalition building and community.
If we come out of this Ramadan if
we wanna be on the right way, we
wanna invest in our marriages.
Therapy if it's needed. It's alright. It's not
the end of the world.
That means you're taking your religion, your your
marriage serious.
Making sure that I'm not always looking at
the screen before one day I look and
my parents are gone.
Screen gonna be
there,
but one day young brother and sister your
parents will be gone. What's important?
What's important?
That I invest in my family.
I invest in my friends.
I invest in my Muslim community not just
financially
by being present. That's why I've called present
because it's a gift.
I give the gift of my
engagement.
Say, Nala Sur Nurmagick radiAllahu anhu. He said
the prophet when he talked to people he
gave them his undivided attention.
Make sure as fathers we're spending time with
our daughters and our sons.
When I was in my early twenties I
always just say man I need a break.
I need a break. I need a break.
I need a break for my kids. I
need a break for my kids. And that
becomes a habit where the break is what's
valuable.
But what am I breaking when I take
that break? I'm breaking my children's hearts.
And shaitan will try to get us caught
up in ourselves
Who is saved from that kind of selfishness
is lucky
that we are realign ourselves from the neo
capitalist agenda
of finding our intrinsic value by what we
buy and purchase
instead relocating
ourselves that our value comes from impacting and
be in being impacted by those closest to
us.
And the prophet
made this a condition for Jannah.
When he said you will not enter Jannah
till you believe
and you will not believe until you love
each other.
So we ask
Allah
The last two important qualities, I'm gonna touch
1 very quickly and then the last time,
spend a little time talking about.
But one that we should talk about because
it really is one of the greatest extensions
of the colonial world,
the destruction of the Muslim Ummah,
the enslavement of society,
subjugating the world to buy into the totalizing
false western universal that what's white is right.
That's what's west is what's best.
Especially incarnated by false American Centricism
as it explodes the post European experience
and amplifies it into the world.
If I'm busy waxing oxygen, I can't put
the oxygen needed to keep my iman strong
man.
And that is the economy.
Where do I locate the economy in my
life?
If I've been infected
by men of modernity
and I'm coming out of a post pandemic
situation,
Do I see my goal in life is
to be opulent
or sufficient?
Am I confusing opulence with sufficient?
The prophet salallahu alaihi wasallam commanded us to
be moral
and equitable
and Muslim
even in the marketplace.
When he said, kamalawahu
termidi
hayrokum,
the best of you is the one who
rules you up. The one who has
sufficient,
sufficient,
Alhamdulillah,
wealth.
And Allah warns us of being those who
get caught up in the cult of occulence
has now perpetuated.
It
is saturated in the west.
Why? Because if you are running a capitalist
based ethos or even communism which is another
story,
capitalist based ethos or even communism which is
another story,
you can motivate people to fall for the
okeydoke
by
buttressing their lives with images of absolute
opulence so they will always be running after
trying to be like Tony Stark.
But if you're busy catching up with the
Kardashians
you ain't catching up with Jannah.
I wanna be like Muhammad
Alayhi Salaam
That's enough for me.
I don't need to be like anyone else.
I don't need to emulate anyone else.
The prophet is Uswatul Hasanah and that's not
a symbolic gesture
that
implies I am shifting my moral
compass
and how I see the world in a
very different way.
That's why the man came to the prophet
said, wallahi, I love you. Prophet said, be
careful what you say. He said, no. I
love you. The prophet said, be ready for
poverty. It doesn't mean poverty as we understand
it. What it means is you may not
be opulent.
You may suffer.
So where do I see the economy? For
many people,
I would argue that in the West the
economy is their aqiblah.
I live in Manhattan.
You can see people when they're arguing about
stocks,
they're moving like that. Kinda like when you
see uncles moving, where is their qiblah?
Very similar movement.
The economy is not my qiblah.
The economy is a tool that I can
use for 4 things that Islam identifies, and
we don't have time to talk about it
now. Number 1, to protect myself and my
honor. It's the purpose. That's why Sufi and
Atawri used to say, almarusilahaatul
mumin, that wealth is the weapon of the
believer. I protect my
self. I can send my children to good
schools. I can be idhnila. I can make
sure my children have right education. I can
live in places where I'm not compromised. I
can live close to the masjid as protecting
myself.
Number 2, I can protect my family.
Number 3, I can protect my community, the
Muslimi.
And number 4,
I can heal a fractured world like Mansa
Musa, masha'Allah.
The last point is all finished is empathy
and coalition building. No one should mistake my
second point that
that it implies somehow we don't value coalition
building and political engagement.
Our political engagement
of late has not been conditioned on Islamic
values.
We amplify what's haram and we know it's
haram just so we can get some utility
politically. That's not a prophetic community.
That is a community that's been compromised.
So we see here this beautiful community working
with the local government. You're able now to
extend the mosque and potentially buy another building.
That's great coalition building.
In Boston, we worked to ensure affordable housing
for people in the city of Boston to
deal with sentencing guidelines that was impacting black
men in particular.
That's called good coalition building. But just to
go to an iftar
to eat some nice falafel
and take a picture with the mayor or
the governor
and get nothing out of it or go
to an interfaith event where they make fun
of Muslims and I smile and say nothing
or I say what makes them happy even
if I know it's a lie, that's not
coalition building.
That's treachery.
And maybe it's not for everybody.
It's not
but empathy
should allow me to be invested in people
in a dignified way, in a loving way.
Don't argue with them except it's with Edda.
And that takes us now to Afghanistan.
Brothers and sisters, SubhanAllah,
for the last 4 or 5 decades, Afghanistan
has been devastated.
The incursion of both colonial powers whether in
the name of neoliberalism, capitalism, or communism
into Afghanistan has destroyed Catholicism.
Now they're saying that in the next few
months Afghanistan
will have around 96%
of the people
under the poverty line, international poverty line, not
the American poverty line.
And the overwhelming majority of those impacted by
that are going to be orphans.
SubhanAllah.
Didn't our prophet say that I and the
one who looks after our orphan are gonna
be like this? Empathy. We are empathetic to
people. These are hard times.
I'm here with Islamic Relief today, alhamdulillah,
raising money for orphans
in Afghanistan.
I wanna encourage you this month of Ramadan
to show that post pandemic empathy,
which is so desperately needed.
We ask Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala be asma'ihi
kulliha
wa sifratigarula
anya hadina ilama yarlaahu
azawwajal
We ask Allah to bless our Muslim brothers
and sisters in India.
There's tremendous challenges happening in India.
We ask Allah
to protect them and wake up the world.
Pray for our brothers and sisters in Afghanistan
and Pakistan also where there's tremendous political challenges
happening.
Ask Allah
Pray for our brothers and sisters in Ethiopia.
Nobody's,
is talking about what's happening in Ethiopia and
Nigeria.
We ask Allah
We pray for our brothers and sisters in
Palestine and Syria and Iraq and Yemen
and Macedonia and all over the world.
We ask Allah to accept those who we
lost in COVID as Shuhada.
We ask Allah to heal those who may
be suffering with any type of illnesses, mental,
emotional, physical, or otherwise.
We pray for our children that if our
children are astray, Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala will
guide them back to us. We pray for
our parents if we're having trouble communicating with
them, Allah
will give us the wisdom and hikmah to
speak to them. We pray for our marriages
that Allah Allah will strengthen and protect our
marriages from anything which may weaken
that important relationship.
And we ask Allah to bless this community,
to bless the imam of this community, and
raise the ranks of this community.