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