Suhaib Webb – The Masses Creed 5 The First Islamic Obligation

We continue now reading from the book, Akhil

al Awam, the creed of the masses by

imam,

Ahmed al Marzuki al Husseini al Azhari al

Mariki.

And we've now completed the introduction. Now we've

moved on to the actual core subject matter

of the text

around 64 lines left. And

the first chapter deals with the acquisition of

faith,

the role of the intellect and faith, and

then belief in God. What are the qualities

that Muslims,

hold,

as sacred in relationship to to Allah

And the sheikh begins, you can see right

here, always to the left, there's our poem.

This is a really, really important line, guys,

and I want you to pay attention to

that statement.

Because in this line, he's saying, no, that

learning is an obligation.

Right? Learning

is an obligation

and that you must know 20 qualities of

God. We're gonna talk about those in the

future, but you'll remember how I said that

the way of mainstream scholars was to to

equip the masses with universals,

right, teach them qualities instead of the specific

differences

of the scholars, right, to prepare them

for having a meaningful relationship with Allah

and for public life. But the thing that

we wanna talk about right now is that

statement.

Because what he's doing is he's taking a

position.

He's taking a position of the mainstream,

scholars, and that is what is the first

obligation

upon a person?

Right? From the point of Muslim theology and

Islam and the Quran,

what

is the first

obligation

upon a human being?

And this is gonna blow your mind. You

know, when I ask Muslims this, they get

they get shocked, and and we we we

see the the the the racist, bigoted,

uninformed,

uneducated,

speculation

about our religion from people like Bill Maher,

who said that Islam is a mother load

of bad ideas,

and others

who who have really invested themselves in commodifying

hatred.

But if you were to, for example, be

at an MSA gathering

or a interfaith gathering or you name it,

that line right there is gonna give you

a very, very powerful set of arguments

because it addresses

what is the first responsibility

from the point of Islamic theology

upon any human being.

People say to believe, to pray, to supplicate,

whatever,

but our scholars said, and that's what he's

saying here,

Right? You must know

that the first

obligation upon any human being

before faith, before worship,

is to think.

Islam believes that the first step in a

relationship with God

is using one's intellect.

That's why Allahu

says

in the Quran,

in the 47th chapter,

You must

that there is no god except Allah.

Many times in the Quran,

No. No. No. The only thing that the

prophet was ordered to ask for, an increase

in was what?

So what what does that mean for us

as parents,

as educators,

as content providers?

That instead of shutting the door of the

intellect and closing that door on people who

have really serious questions about their faith,

and those questions, it

will cause them to be passionately invested in

their faith. We should understand their first obligation

is to know.

We should open up those

those opportunities for people to learn. That's why

the prophet

said

that the remedy for any

challenge is to ask a question.

So this runs counter

to the notions of the Islamophobes and anti

Muslim bigots

as well as counter to the perceptions towards

religion in general, that religion stifles questioning,

stifles learning,

encourages people just to blindly follow. No. No.

No. No. In Islam,

The first obligation is to think. Now this

is not just his opinion.

This opinion is held by scholars throughout history.

Imam ibn Asher says very beautifully,

the first obligation upon anyone who is responsible,

and

is that they have to use their minds,

and they have to think. This was the

dominant opinion

held by mainstream

scholars

across Islam's history. We're going to continue to

talk about these other important principles that we

take from this 5th line of the poem.