Suhaib Webb – The Masses Creed 11 Responsibility & Mercy
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We pick up now,
under the 5th line where the sheikh notes
that the first obligation upon anyone,
is to to learn and that caused us
to really
discuss a number of issues. Number 1 is
at an interfaith level, how do we interact
with scholarship and knowledge? What is an obligation
upon each and every one of us to
learn? Where are we obligated to ask? Right?
Questions of the learned. Then that takes us
into the idea if the first obligation is
to think and the freedom of the mind
and the engagement of the mind,
how do we reconcile that with a notion
of certain people, whether the heterodoxical community or
even the Islamophobes that Islam believes in constant
jihad. Right? Freedom of expression, freedom of religion,
policy at a government level, you name it,
all that's going to fall kind of under
this condition for Muslim countries,
and and people who live in those kind
of environments.
And then what's left is really to talk
about 2 important issues. I will do now
quickly Insha'Allah. Number 1 is who is responsible?
The idea of responsibility. Who's responsible
in having a relationship with God? Right? To
believe in God and to practice as a
Muslim. And And then what about people that
have never been exposed,
to Islam properly?
What do we say about their situation in
the hereafter as Muslims? What is the dominant
mainstream opinion? So the first thing that we
wanna talk about is the idea of
responsibility,
and the word for responsibility
in Arabic
is taqleef.
Is
means responsibility. Let me write it for you
in English.
Takkalif.
And the person who is responsible
is.
The.
In English,
The is someone who is to pass a
participle someone has made them responsible.
The one who dispenses
responsibility is the mukalif
the mukalif, but the mukalif that fatha
means the object. Now in Islam, we believe
that there are certain conditions
which make someone responsible
for having a relationship with the creator, responsible
for having a relationship with faith and practice.
A name that you're gonna hear a lot
is Ibn Ashir. Ibn Ashir is a Andalusian
scholar from years ago who wrote really what
is the seminal text as an introductory text
in the Maliki school, which covers the issues
of creed, iman, practice Islam,
and Saluk or Tasawwuf Ihsaan.
And in this incredible poem,
he notes that the following are the conditions
of responsibility. What makes someone responsible? Parents,
this may be of interest to you. So
he says,
first part of the poem, the first stanza,
he says,
responsibility
is conditioned
on number 1, the intellect. So the first
thing we believe which
makes someone responsible in their relationship with Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is maturation,
emotional, and cognitive
maturity.
Again, though, that goes back to the idea
that the first obligation is to what?
To know
or to think. Right? So he says be
shocked till
and that bar right there means because of
her due to
the So
right? That every
and what he means by is
anything which is or
haram
or sunnah or Makru.
Right? All that falls under what's called
Right?
So someone is responsible for establishing the commands
of God, whether the orders
or prohibitions.
The first condition of that, taqleef, is what?
Al aqal,
is to to to be able to think
properly.
The second, maalboluri,
is puberty.
And what are the signs of puberty? He
says menstrual blood,
or pregnancy.
Or for boys,
*
or the appearance of pubic hair
And the last, and this this should be
right here, actually.
The last is what if if none none
of those signs exist
then when someone turns 18. Now the question
that parents ask all the time is what
if I have a child who's physically mature
but not mentally mature? Or if I have
a child who's mentally mature but not physically
mature, we say that those people are what
is
called taqif naqis. Right? Taqif naqis.
So we still treat them with some dispensation
and some mercy.
Right? In general, though, we see these are
the conditions of Takli. Right?
Intellect,
puberty
due to menstrual
blood or pregnancy
or *
or pubic hair. And if none of those
exist when someone turns 18, unless they still
have issues here.
The
Akal never excuses anyone. The mind is always
a condition.
Learning
and the use of the mind is the
main
We say is al aqal.
Now, Al Qadir Iyad, he's a great scholar
also. I mean, he's amazing. He added a
another condition,
to this, and that is that the information
actually reached a person.
Same as that word right here,
That's a dal, so forgive me.
Meaning that the information reached the person properly.
Imam Al Ghazali wrote an entire book about
this. Right?
And and and the proof for this is
this verse right here. You should memorize this
verse. It's very important. From 17th chapter of
the Quran, 15th verse, Allah says
We never punish people until we send them
a messenger because the messenger is going to
give them the prerequisite information needed to start
that relationship with God. So the question comes
a lot of times from people, what about
people who never heard about Islam? Or what
about people that have heard about Islam but
in a way which is of course not
correct, which is most of the people.
So the hadith of the prophet salam al
Sahih Muslim, it's a really long hadith, states
that those kind of people will be treated
by God in the hereafter
justly. We don't say that they're going to
*. We don't say they're going to heaven.
We say that their case rests with
Allah Right? And in this life, we don't
expect them to act as Muslims because they
don't have that information, right? They haven't been
taught
Islam or exposed to faith. So we treat
them with mercy and we say that their
case
is known to Allah
and thereafter.
So we're done now, hamdullah, with the first
section
of the 5th line of the poem. We
talked about the obligation to learn. We talked
about how that plays out at a communal
level, right, when it comes to knowledge and
engaging knowledge.
How it plays out in an interfaith level
with people of other faiths, not forcing people,
you know, to become Muslim. We'll talk about,
why apostate should should not be killed,
in the future Insha'Allah
and then the second and third thing we
talked about are the signs of responsibility,
the conditions of responsibility, and then finally what
do we say about people who Islam has
never reached them properly.
Do me a favor
this course is really starting to gain some
traction.
Help me out by spreading it, sharing it
on social media,
engaging people in conversations around it.
It's very important that it's
to teach the It is an obligation on
the one who knows the obligations
to teach the obligations. We do this for
the benefit of our brothers and sisters in
the community.