Tom Facchine – Islam Has a Cultural Mandate
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses the importance of culture in achieving Islam, citing examples such as the Sharia's command to love the Prophet and the importance of bringing it to the heart and soul. They emphasize the need for local indigenous culture to be included in the culture and that it is a constructive and productive relationship.
AI: Summary ©
Islam has a cultural mandate.
Allah actually says in the Quran, وَأْمُرْ بِالْعُرْفِ
command to urf, which is kind of weird
to translate it because it's like command to
culture.
And even when Allah says, الْأَمْرُ بِالْمَعْرُوفِ and
the Prophet ﷺ says الْأَمْرُ بِالْمَعْرُوفِ commanding or
enjoining المعروف.
It's not enough.
I don't think it's not specific enough to
translate it as the good.
Allah didn't say وَأْمُرْ بِالْخَيْرِ He said وَأْمُرْ
بِالْمَعْرُوفِ معروف is like the known good.
And there is a reason why, it's not
a coincidence that urf, culture or custom and
المعروف are linguistically related.
It's a nod to the fact that there
are things that the Sharia generally approves of,
meaning that as opposed to specifically commands to,
there are general things in the Sharia that
the details of which are filled in by
urf, by custom.
And this is known.
The scholars have a saying, الْأُرْفُ مُحَكَّمًا that
the custom is, I want to say مُحَكَّمًا
is authoritative.
And it has conditions, so it's not always.
And there can be cultural or customs, cultural
practices or customs that are haram.
Okay, we're not saying that this is a
blank check.
But in specific scenarios, that Islam cares about
the furthering and the purification of culture.
Culture is important.
Islam is not anti-culture.
Why?
Because culture helps, I don't want to say
fill in the gaps, because there's no gaps
in the Sharia.
It's actually part of the Sharia.
Culture helps to tie people's minds and hearts
to the Sharia in culturally specific ways.
I'll give you a flip side example.
A lot of people who convert to Islam
from Christianity, they miss Christmas.
Okay, Christmas is one of the things they
miss the most.
They don't miss Easter, usually.
They miss Christmas.
Why?
They don't miss the fact that, you know,
celebrating Jesus's birth.
They don't miss like those things.
They miss the snow in the window and
the white candles in the window and the
cookies coming out of the oven and all
of the sensual memories that the cultural aspects...
It's a very culturally potent thing, Christmas.
The way that they build it out is
very, you could say, intelligent, even though it's
based on falsehood.
First of all, Jesus wasn't born then.
Second of all, he's not the Son of
God.
You know, we know we have our criticisms.
But if you look at how to create
culture and what culture can do, just like
the nasheeds of the companions or other things
that they did, what did they say in
their poetry?
What did they recite?
What did they talk about in their nasheeds?
They talked about the battles.
They talked about, you know, like things.
But that was in their own cultural mode,
right?
So if we have a general command in
the Qur'an and in the Sunnah to
love Allah and to love the Prophet ﷺ,
then cultural modes become significant for how to
achieve that, okay?
For the Arabs, it was poetry.
Poetry was their thing, okay?
If you go to other places, they had
other things going on.
Now, you have to filter that through the
sharia.
What's haram?
What's halal?
And what's sort of a gray area?
But the thing is that everywhere Islam went,
it had a constructive and productive relationship with
the local culture.
It was not anti-culture.
It didn't wipe out cultures.
This is another one of the main differences
between the spread of Islam and the spread
of, say, European colonialism, which came and completely
wiped out cultures, homogenized the places.
Islam did not do that.
Islam, actually, wherever it went, started in Arabia.
Then it went to Sham, right?
Then it went to Iraq and Persia.
And it went to Egypt and Sudan and
North Africa and West Africa.
And all these places, Asia Minor, Eastern Europe,
the Balkans, to Sindh, to India, Hindustan, to
Southeast Asia, everywhere it went, it had a
productive and constructive relationship with the culture that
already existed.
So what does that look like?
That means that Islam and the sharia put
that local indigenous culture into a filter.
And the things that were good and pure,
it allowed to keep going.
And the things that were completely ridiculous and
beyond the pale, it stopped.
And the things that were a mixed bag,
it purified.
It removed the bad elements and the harmful
elements from it.
And it allowed the positive elements to raise
to the top.
And that's why you're able to have a
local Arab Islamic culture and a local Persian
Islamic culture and a local Turkic Islamic culture
and a local Bosnian or Balkan Islamic culture
or an Amazigh Islamic culture.
All these sorts of areas that Islam came
to, after it was allowed to interact with
what was on the ground, it produced an
Islamic version of that culture.
Now, what's the purpose of talking about this
for Dawah in the Americas?
We have to let the same thing happen
here.
You can't just import the culture.
You can't import all of, you can't recreate
Egypt or Cairo or Baghdad or Damascus or
Fez in Iowa or Kentucky or inner city
Philly.
I mean, you could, you can literally do
it, but it's not going to call to
the people.
That's not going to be legible to people.
People aren't going to be able to see
that and see themselves in it and say,
maybe this is for me.
They're going to say, oh, that's what those
foreigners do.
And they're going to keep on pushing.
So when it comes to doing Dawah, the
cultural imperative is very, very important to the
Dawah.
You have to be able to bring Islam
to the hood and allow it to interact
with the culture and purify it.
You have to be able to bring Islam
to the barrio and allow it to interact
with the culture and purify it.
You have to let Islam come to the
res.
You have to let Islam come to the
trailer parks and allow it to interact with
the culture and purify it.
And then what you get out of that,
that's actually what's going to allow the people
to see it as a possibility for themselves
and then actually potentially embrace it and make
it their own.
One of the groups that I've seen do
it is Islam and Spanish.
Islam and Spanish does this well.
Imam Abu Samaya, Wesley LeBron does this well,
right, with the three Puerto Rican imams.
If you go down to Texas and they
got Brother Jalil, who, you know, recently was
in the hospital, continued to heal him, he
goes there eating his mariachi suit, you know,
so they understand that I've seen them do
it.
So it's definitely something that's possible to do.
So absolutely, there's ways to do it.