Suhaib Webb – The Masses Creed 1 Studying Faith to Live Faith

One of the questions that I tend to

get a lot from people to the point

that it really

forced me to sit down and pay attention

is how can people move beyond the culture

of entertainment,

within the Muslim community as far as learning?

Like, we get our Friday night lectures,

get our Sunday night family nights, we have

our conventions, but there's very little symmetry,

organization to the process of education,

in the mainstream Muslim community.

Because of that, I decided to put together

a series of courses rooted

in the 11 basic uloom, the 11 uloom,

the 11 scientists recognized by mainstream scholarship throughout

history as the 11 core subjects that any

Muslim who's really interested

in pursuing literacy and then maybe after

that moving into higher levels of scholarship should

be familiarized with. And adding to each one

of those 11, a book which has been

renowned and accepted by the majority of mainstream

Muslim scholars

throughout history,

teaching it in a way which is relevant

to us here in the West. The first

course inshallah that we're going to start with

is

on

faith.

Scholars put faith before everything else because without

the principles of faith,

someone may read the Quran incorrectly.

Someone may interpret it or the Sunnah incorrectly,

fiqh,

Arabic language,

o solafiqh,

sira, you name it. So we're gonna start

with a text called the creed of the

masses, aqidutawem,

written by this incredible scholar, Sheikh Ahmed Al

Marzuki

al Husseini al Madiki, who wrote this book

in the early 19th century in Egypt.

And the the context of that is very

important because at that time, Egypt

shifted to public education, the idea of public

schools.

So so the sheikh's job is to write

a book

which is digestible for the masses

but stays true to orthodoxy,

and that's the book that you have in

front of us. Now before we start, let's

get a few things out of the way.

Number 1 is whenever we talk about studying

creed or akita,

you know, we get the people who always

wanna argue over what it's called.

Right? Is it

called Apida?

Is it called,

Ilm

Al Kalam?

Is it called iman?

You know, the science of iman.

Is it called,

for example,

right, the science of

tawhid?

I want you guys to understand something really,

really important, and this is the way I

teach.

I like to teach people principles of interpretation

that were adopted by our mainstream scholars. And

one of the most important principles

that you can learn and probably will help

you solve numerous crisis in your community or

in your MSA

is the the principle.

There is no arguing

over terminology.

There's no arguing over terms.

Right? Another

one, concern and regard is given for the

meaning, not the name. You can call it

whatever you wanna call it. Tawhid,

aqida, faith,

revert, convert. Nobody really cares.

What matters

is the meaning. I want you to remember

this. Now let's get started. The first line,

as you can see, here's the Arabic. Here

we go. Out of 70 lines,

This is the first one. You only got

69 lines left.

And as you can see, there's a gulf

right here in the middle. You know why?

Because

the sheikh had bars, man.

This is poetry.

This is poetry. And the reason he wrote

in poetry is the masses in those days

were uneducated.

So we see a theme in the writing

of the sheikh,

staying true to orthodoxy

and reaching the community.

True to orthodoxy,

reaching the community, marrying the heavens and the

earth. So he begins

I'm gonna read this again right here. Pay

attention.

Which means I begin

seeking blessings

with god's names, the merciful, the redeemer,

whose benevolence

is constant.

Now over here is the vocabulary.

You can see the meanings of it, but

what I want us to pay special attention

to as we move forward is that letter

ba. But he says, Abda'u, I begin, be

with Ismailahi,

the names of Allah,

Wa and Ar Rahmani.

Ar Rahman is the one who's infinitely merciful.

His mercy is not restricted

to anything universally merciful.

Believer, non believer,

heathen, saint,

everybody's breathing.

Everybody feels the warmth of the sun.

And here's something really important because a lot

of times we struggle. A lot of times

we feel like, you know, I'm a person

of faith and everyone around me is anti

faith. Well, al Rahimi al Rahim is the

one who has restricted a special mercy for

the believers in the hereafter. Allah says

So imagine every struggle, every challenge you're undergoing,

there's a special mercy waiting for you in

the hereafter.

Pay attention to this.

There's a method. There's a logic to this

first line.

Means the one who is constantly

benevolent,

and the sheikh is doing something here very

important.

He mentions 4 names of god. Right? Allah,

ar Rahman, ar Rahim. Then he mentions a

concept about god.

And what he's trying to tell you is,

and this is something classical scholars used to

do, Right?

Means they would

insinuate

what the subject of the book was in

the first few lines of the book itself.

Right? So what he's saying is Allah

the subject of the book of theology.

But there's something else happening here, and that's

why I want you to pay attention to

this quickly.

He begins with Allah's name,

but then he he talks about a quality

of god as if to tell you, listen.

When I teach this book to you, when

I teach theology to you, I'm not going

to get into the specific details of theology

over which scholars argue and differ.

I'm gonna focus on universal principles,

qualities if you will, principles, right?

Why?

Because

Islamic theology has 2 major, major functions.

I want you to remember this. The first

one is to make you a servant of

God.

Right? Allah says

right? Allah describes the prophet as his servant.

Allah's servant. Right? To be a great worshiper.

But this one people don't talk about a

lot and that's to prepare you for public

life.

And and unfortunately,

worshipers of God, but then he says about

them what?

They walked in the markets.

They're not going to live forever.

So here at the end of the poem,

first line of the poem, he mentions this

quality of god as if to tell you,

listen.

I'm not gonna get you involved in all

of the theological arguments and particulars that people

busy themselves with.

But the mainstream Muslim scholars throughout history, instead

of getting involved in these little issues about

the attributes of God and so on and

so forth,

they taught

the fundamental principles

to prepare people for public life.

Because think about this.

If you engage theology

by studying the differences

of which Muslim scholars have not been able

to solve

for the last 1400 years,

how are you going to take that and

export that to public life

and expect people who are not even Muslim

to be able to resonate with those differences?

But if you're equipped with principles and universals,

that will not only help you become

a a catalyst of unity,

right, and equalizing the differences in the Muslim

community, but you'll also be able to go

with those universals. You'll be equipped

to engage the larger society.

Right? So the the goal of this book

is to help us become better servants of

God

and to be content providers

at a public level.

Now I said I wanted you to pay

attention to that letter ba, and this is

extremely important based on what I just talked

about. Oftentimes, we we see the word ba

translated as in. I

believe in God. But ba doesn't mean in.

If I say in Arabic, it means I

came with Amr. I walked in with Amr.

That's why it's called ba'at Musahaba,

like sahaba.

Right? Sahaba are,

the companions of sayinu Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa

sallam. That is

called

meaning the ba of companionship.

Because we're not come in with Amr. He's

he's my companion.

He's with me. So when I say

that means I don't believe in god. That

means I believe

what?

I believe

with god.

And that's very different.

Because when you say I believe with something,

that implies

reciprocation.

That implies now that I am not alone.

And most importantly, that implies the acquisition of

knowledge

coupled with making the right

choices.

So right here, if you look at these

quickly, belief in god, choosing god over evil,

belief in angels, understanding I'm being watched. I

make the right choice. I live properly.

Belief with god's books and messengers,

when it comes to to to me being

confused or or following my desires, I choose

to live with the books of god in

the face of those challenges.

Belief with the hereafter, I'm either go go

to the bar or the membar. I'm choosing

the membar because I believe that I will

be resurrected and asked about the choices I

made. And belief with providence, we'll talk about

in the future. But now as we go

through this poem, just this one line, we

are reshaping

how how we look at faith and the

role of faith in our lives. It's about

the acquisition of knowledge,

affirming and believing in those those articles of

knowledge,

and then making the right choices. Let's finish

up

by reviewing this last line. I'm gonna read

it a few times for

insha'Allah

As we close out, we talked about the

11 core subjects of Islam. The first one

is theology.

We talked about the idea of living with

theology, not in theology.

We talked about the dangers of arguing over

terminology.

We talked about the importance of learning universal

principles

before little specific issues of hilaf, of differences

amongst the ulama. Now it's sad to see

people start teaching the masses

by teaching them these little differences.

That that's that's that goes against mainstream Islam.

Right? What mainstream scholarship did for over a

1000 years. And then we reminded ourselves of

living with faith and making the right choices.

Only

69

lines to go and we're done.