Suhaib Webb – Why-Islam – Why-Islam
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the importance of the Qwhwhorn's translation and its impact on young people, as well as the use of the Quran for political advice and avoiding harm. They also touch on the importance of learning about teachings of the Quran for political advice and avoiding harm. The use of prophets to teach people not to be associated with the wrong way of doing things is also highlighted. The speakers emphasize the need for a political community to speak out against harm and highlight the importance of learning about teachings of the Quran.
AI: Summary ©
So now you get to see what it's
really like.
We're still daddies, right?
We still have children and we still have
to do our main job.
You know my main job is honey and
baba, not imam.
So, don't take pictures of her please because
we know the Zionist, they like to do
stuff with our pictures if you don't mind,
but she was too scared to stay in
her stroller.
So Alhamdulillah my daughter, this is my four
year old, she's brave, I would be too
scared to be on stage honestly if I
were four years old, five years old, five,
yeah, five.
So I was asked to talk about the
Qur'an and Dawah and as someone who
actually became Muslim by reading the Qur'an
when I was very young, 16, 17 years
old, I can reflect on personally what that
meant to me.
We know that the Qur'an says, إِنَّ
هَٰذَا الْقُرْآنَ يَهْدِي لِلَّتِيهِ أَقْوَامٌ That the Qur
'an, it guides to what's right.
And so I remember being at that age,
reading the Qur'an and immediately being overwhelmed
by the goodness that it invites to.
And feeling like, wow, this is a text
that really speaks to my broader sense of
purpose, as well as identifying my role as
a creation of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
So I think there's a few lessons, I'm
going to keep it brief because I'm babysitting,
Alhamdulillah, or I'm being babysat maybe.
That we should think about in this moment
where we're finding people attracted to the Qur
'an due to the sacrifice of the Palestinian
people.
And specifically within this country, the incredible contribution
and bravery and sacrifice of Generation Z.
And so there are a few lessons we
can take and that is number one, maybe
we like forgot ourselves for a while.
It was really strange since 2016 to see
Muslims more enamored by political nomenclature, identifying themselves
as right or left, Democrat or Republic, instead
of being part of the ummah of the
Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam.
And in fact, we started to see divisions.
I even saw divorces happen over politics in
families.
And I'm not talking about like with, you
know, AK in Pakistan.
I'm talking about someone who identified as a
neoconservative and someone who defined themselves as a
liberal.
And then that leading to divorce of a
family with multiple children.
And one of the things that we can
appreciate is that secular political thought is as
corrosive as sexual Western thought.
That the outcome of secularism, whether it shows
itself in neoliberalism, neoliberalism is going to kill
the Muslims with a slow, slow attachment to
oxygen.
But slowly it will take the oxygen off.
So you don't feel it.
Neoconservatism will amputate your limbs immediately.
One of them wants to eat our body.
The other wants to eat our soul, but
to find Muslims, and maybe it's because learning
the Quran and mastering the Quran and being
a Quranic nation is hard work.
It demands work.
Allah says, وَجَاهِ بِهِ جِهَادًا كَبِيرًا That you
have to make jihad in your relationship with
the Quran.
You have to push yourself.
It's easier to listen to Tucker and Candace
and AOC and be hip on what's going
on in YouTube, instead of sitting and asking
yourself, what does the Quran say for this
moment?
And how am I going to project that
light into my world?
And that's what made the early generations very
different than us.
And that's why one of my teachers used
to say that Western politics is the sewage
of intellectual thought.
It is the sewage.
And that's why everyone has something to say
about it.
But how many people can tell you what
Hamza from Kisa'i said about أن الدين
عند الله الإسلام How many people can tell
you that Shu'ba reads a Qur'an
instead of Qur'an?
How many?
Oh, that's hard.
No, no, it's not hard.
We're hard on ourselves.
And that's why I challenged me as someone
who became Muslim.
I memorized the Qur'an, Hamza, in two
years.
And I finished the qiraat in three.
Is I want to say to my convert
community, where is the Qur'an amongst us?
That we pay religious teachers just enough to
be on boost mobile.
But we, if we really want to scale,
we would make being an imam and making
especially women's scholarship within the community, which is
needed, a viable career option that people can
retire on.
We will not look down on them.
But we have been polluted by the idea
that what Richard and Meredith have given us
is somehow more valuable than what our ancestors
left us.
We are very much like Simba looking in
the water and we see a pig.
But we're the last bastions of prophetic guidance
on the face of the earth, man.
The third is we need to think about
how the Qur'an is presented and taught
to non-Muslims.
And we see that now.
You know, I went and found the copy
of the Qur'an in the library by
myself.
I went to the library and I found
the old Yusuf Ali one that's printed backwards.
Some of the OGs, chachas may remember that
one.
From Pakistan with the waves and the pages,
man.
The cool, you know, Grateful Dead looking graphics.
And I was like, man, this book is
far out, man.
Look at the pages, you know.
And it was printed backwards.
So when I started reading it backwards, I
had friends that were in the Nation of
Islam who say the white man is the
devil.
So I began to read it and I
said, man, it's backwards.
Maybe the white man can't understand it.
I am the devil.
And then I basically had to read the
Qur'an by myself for three years.
From the age of like 16, four years
to 20.
And became Muslim in the restroom in my
mother's house.
Well, I hate the Qur'an because my
mother is old school Oklahoma Christian woman.
If she found Muhammad's Bible in her house,
I will not be standing here today.
I will be gone, dismembered somewhere in the
country of Oklahoma.
But it was there that I found guidance.
And I remember the verse I came across
in the fifth chapter of the Qur'an.
As I struggled to balance out turning my
back on Jesus and worshiping the God of
Jesus.
Strange proposition.
And I remember reading the verse, كَانَ يَتْقُولَانِ
الطَّعَامِ That Jesus and his mother ate food.
And I said, that's it.
That's true.
They ate food.
If you ate food, how can you be
God?
هُوَ يُطَعِيمُ وَلَا يُطَمَى Allah feeds, is not
fed.
So we have to, and why Islam does
a great job, I think Mustafa Khattab's translation
of the clear Qur'an is beautiful because
it doesn't have all the parentheses.
Listen, the Qur'an, it comes without tafsir
for a reason.
If Allah wanted there to be tafsir in
the Qur'an, He would have put it
there.
And that we know that there are intelligence
agencies and foreign governments who we all remember
the Noble Qur'an when it came out
in the early 90s.
What was on the first, the end of
that translation?
What was the longest essay?
A call to Jihad.
There's nothing wrong with Jihad.
But the impact that that had on young
minds and old minds of people, a few,
who because they read that made very irresponsible
decisions and joined ISIS and went to certain
places.
We have to be careful of translations that
come from overseas, to be honest with you.
Because we know that intelligence agencies are working
night and day.
So that's why I think Dr. Mustafa Khattab
has done a great job of presenting a
translation that's accessible, easy, the language isn't hard,
and there's not all those parentheses.
I don't need to know what you think
about the Qur'an, I need to develop
my relationship with the Qur'an.
And then if I have questions, I ask
scholars.
But locally in Masajid, at this moment, there
should be programs on understanding the Qur'an.
You should be at the forefront of this.
One time when I was in Boston, a
library contacted me, said, can you come and
talk about the Qur'an?
I said, sure.
The librarian, she told me, thank you for
coming.
I've been having a rabbi do this for
10 years.
I said, rabbi do what?
Rabbi cooking, you're right there.
Rabbi cooking halal meat.
She said, well, he's the only one that
would respond.
So the rabbi came for 10 years and
taught those people about our book.
I said, man, subhanAllah, I'm sorry.
She said, no, no one would respond.
So thinking about this moment and scaling how
we bring the Qur'an and the accessibility
of the Qur'an to the people around
us.
And there's a million ways.
Young people on TikTok are doing a great
job of this already.
On Instagram, they're doing a great job of
this already.
How do you now package this for different
mediums and different age groups?
And you think about bringing in educators, you
create a pedagogy and you target people where
they are.
The last is your responsibility with the Qur
'an and my responsibility with the Qur'an.
The Prophet ﷺ said, القرآن حجة لك أو
عليك.
The Qur'an is a proof for you
or against you.
I remember shortly after I became Muslim, I
became Muslim in the Daisy community.
ورضاته الحمد لله.
And, you know, those are my friends all
from Karachi.
You know, they're back in Pakistan because that
was before 9-11.
And brilliant computer science guys and other fields,
doctors.
Those are my boys.
We used to play cricket together.
Great time.
I learned how to make Daal.
Doodh Patti.
And there was a friend of mine, I'm
not going to say his name because he'll
see this and I'll get a phone call.
Right after I became Muslim, there was an
MSA booth.
I was very young, so I sat at
the MSA booth with him.
And people would come in Oklahoma, right?
People would come and say to him, What
is the message of the Qur'an?
How is it different than the Bible?
And he would say, You have to ask
a scholar.
That would always be his answer.
So then finally I said to him, Man,
stop saying that.
Because it shows that you don't have the
confidence in your own text to understand what
it's about.
And when you say this, you're like punting.
It's very obvious to people.
Then I said to him, What is the
Qur'an to you?
And he said, Rahmat.
Mercy.
I said, Well then say that.
He said, I don't feel the confidence.
So, first of all, to gain the confidence
to talk about the Qur'an, attend.
Maybe twice a month.
Once a week if possible.
One of your local Imams or teachers.
Teaching the Qur'an.
See it as a slow drip.
MSAs, invite Imams to come.
I love what Generation Z is telling me.
If you weren't at the encampments, we don't
respect you.
I respect that.
You have Generation Z contacting us and saying,
I know Dr. Yasser, I know others.
Can you travel here and come to this
camp?
Don't you have local religious leaders?
Well their board won't let them come.
Are you serious?
Their board won't let them come?
It's horrible.
But Generation Z, push out.
Invite Imams and teachers to come and teach
the Qur'an.
Number two is to develop an axiomatic relationship
with the Qur'an.
And I'll just share one with you.
Anyone who reads the Qur'an regularly, Imam
Abu Hamid, he says in Al-Mustasfa, they
will see one of the greatest patterns of
the Qur'an which is the mandate of
the Muslim community.
It is our mandate.
It is our role.
It is our purpose.
And we see Muslims doing this, MashaAllah, flawlessly
all the time.
We have a beautiful community, man.
And that is that the goal of Islam
is to bring benefit and prevent harm.
You'll find that in the Qur'an, wherever
you look in the Qur'an.
Ya ayyuhal lazeena aamanu, O you who believe,
after that either is a command to keep
you away from harm, or a command to
bring you benefit.
Go home and test it.
O you who believe, fasting has been prescribed
for you as it was those before you,
so you will achieve taqwa.
This is bringing benefit.
O you who believe, do not ask about
things in tuburulakum tasukkum, if made known to
you, will harm you.
This is preventing harm.
This is the Qur'an.
A text that is guiding you and I
as citizens of this dunya, headed back to
our permanent abode in al-akhirah, to be
those gravely and deeply, excuse me, deeply invested
in jalba musaleh, wa dar'a al-mathasid.
Bringing benefit and preventing harm.
When these people come to you from these
camps, they ask you, I was at two
camps.
One at GW, may Allah bless those students
in SJP, man.
What they did at GW was amazing.
And I hear people say, you know, it
was strange.
I went there, and people were telling me,
these kids are wahshin, haywanat, you know, they're
wild, they're out of control.
I went there, the first thing they told
me is, can you lead maghrib?
I said, we have maghrib every day.
They said, can you give a talk?
I said, you should, man, kill it, bro.
Then one of the sisters told me, can
you come for qiyam ul-layl at the
GW camp?
I said, what?
She said, we have qiyam every night.
When I stood up to pray maghrib, it
was like something out of a Malcolm X
movie, man.
All these people made a circle around us
and held arms.
Non-Muslims.
And then after salah, I had to put,
I wanted to do the, you know, the
moving mountains, be at ease.
I was like, I'm going to do it.
I said, at ease.
Then all them Ambers and Karens and Chris's
and Tito's, they all sat down, man.
I said, wow, look at this discipline.
They were not, that's the bad assumption that
you have of young people.
If you don't live with them, you don't
understand that they're actually the leaders of our
community now.
And they're teaching us now.
And after I finished, I talked about Jesus
and David.
I tried to use prophets that they know,
people would know them.
This man came to me.
And he had blood in his eyes, drawn
down from his eyes, and palestine.
He was a different level, man.
He said to me, Hi mom, I need
a Quran.
So we hooked him up.
I went to UT Austin.
UT Austin students were abused.
Four, three young Bengali sister told me that
the police basically body slammed her and suplexed
her.
Our community is not aware of the physical
punishment that was exercised by law enforcement in
this country against not only young Muslims, but
young people.
You know, one week they said you're the
future, the next week they call you terrorists.
That means they never loved you in the
first place.
And that's on the right and the left.
It took them eight hours to pass giving
billions of dollars to Israel.
Till now they're debating student loan forgiveness.
Do they really care about you?
Nah.
So I went to UT Austin, those brave,
incredible students at MSA there under Imam Anwar,
who's a graduate from Qalam, from Sheikh Abdul
Nasser.
And when I went there, I gave the
khutbah on campus.
Police all over the place, drones, man, it's
wild, man.
Finished the khutbah, this guy comes up to
me, he's like, I just want you to
know, I'm really Jewish.
I said, well alright, welcome Mr. Really Jewish.
He said, but, I need a Quran.
And then he's like, my community, the Zionists,
have turned their back on me.
Can the Muslims help me?
I was arrested yesterday, demonstrating for the people
of Palestine.
I hugged this dude, man.
I said, we got your back, Inshallah.
So you want to put yourself in a
moment to be a conduit to the Quran,
how do you get to understand that mandate?
Bringing benefit, preventing harm.
Number two is, don't think it's going to
be easy.
When I memorize the Quran, I memorize Surah
Nisa.
Surah Nisa is hard, man.
Man, we say Nisa is hard in the
Quran and hard in life.
That's what we say, man.
And so I started crying.
Kaanallahu, kaanallahu, kaanallahu, kaanallahu, kaanallahu, the whole thing,
and that in Sultan Maryam.
I didn't understand Arabic then, in Oklahoma.
I was full time as a self, as
a, you know, tele-operator, because that's what
everyone did in the 90s.
Generation X.
And I was a full time college student.
So I started crying in Surah Nisa.
Shaykh, he looked at me and said, everyone
who tried to do what you're doing had
to cry on this chapter.
It's not easy.
The Quran is not easy because the rewards
are great.
The Quran is not easy because the rewards
are incredible.
But when you look at the early Muslim
community, wherever they went, they had a focus
on preserving the Quran and Sunnah.
And it was that which scaled them.
In America, we became more focused on being
like the right and the left.
And forgetting that we're a prophetic community that
may do politics.
We're not a political community who may do
prophecy.
That's a very different thing.
So as you put yourself for this moment,
and as you learn, understand that this moment
has shown us something.
All these people wanted to learn about the
Quran.
All these people interested in studying.
And we didn't scale that.
We scaled our political work.
We scaled certain aspects of dawah.
But we didn't scale our scholarship in the
Quran in the way that we should have.
As I mentioned earlier.
Okay, I got you.
She wants you to go there.
Okay, go say hi.
She just made a friend, man.
And then the last, that the Quran reminds
us that our sole purpose is Ibadah.
Where you going?
You just gonna go to the bazaar or
something?
With my phone?
Apple Pay?
Alright, you got it, Habibi.
The last thing is, and I'll finish now,
because I have to chase my daughter.
You go.
The last thing is, the more of a
relationship with the Quran you have, there'll be
three symptoms.
Number one, your worship will increase.
You will not find worship as a burden
because it centers you on your purpose.
Number two, you will stay away from the
haram and the doubtful more because you understand
the purpose of the Quran is the hereafter.
Every page of the Quran, the hereafter is
mentioned.
That's a pattern.
Every page.
And finally, you will find yourself located in
the community prophetically to speak out against racial
injustice, economic injustice, sexual immorality, and more importantly,
against shirk and kufr.
That's one of the outcomes of becoming a
political community.
We became enamored by the mandate of the
right and the left to the point that
we forgot our main call to people is
to be emancipated from disbelief and associating partners
with Allah.
May Allah SWT bless you.
I gotta run off now and be a
Baba.
Barakallahu feekum, salamu alaikum.