Tom Facchine – Priority For Muslims Living In The West #1
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the importance of being present in a culture where fear and confusion exist. They emphasize the duty to make minor mistakes and acknowledge that mistakes are small. The speakers also touch on the history and reflection of Islam, as well as the need for people to make it clear they are not a minority. They emphasize the importance of living in a society that is consumerist and capitalist, and acknowledge that mistakes are small.
AI: Summary ©
Our number one priority, especially living in a
place where we are a minority, is to
do da'wah.
I mean, you can approach this from a
fiqhi standpoint, like many scholars have talked about
the permissibility of either traveling to or remaining
in a place where Islam is not the
dominant force.
Obviously, a lot of their conversation revolves around
the fact that it's not a surprise that
you see the kids grow up and many
of the youth go astray.
They find themselves because Islam is not represented
in society, in the values, in the culture,
that there are other forces that are pulling
them away.
And so that is automatically a risky endeavor.
And to counterbalance that, a lot of the
scholars, they discuss the duty to make da
'wah, the duty to call other people and
invite other people to Islam.
And that's really important because we know that
our priority has to be pleasing Allah subhana
wa ta'ala first.
It's not enough.
We have higher aspirations in life as Muslims
than just going to a place that has
a good economy and making money.
And unfortunately, unfortunately, for a lot of people
in the world, that's their only priority.
And if that is your priority, then you're
going to get replaced, to be frank.
Allah will replace you or your children or
your grandchildren.
He'll bring people like me and other people
to be Muslims instead, which is terrifying.
I don't mean to make it into a
joke.
I try to keep it lighthearted, but it
is also terrifying.
If you look at in South America, there
have been waves of immigration to Brazil, to
Colombia, to Venezuela, to different places, Mexico, of
Muslims from Lebanon or from other places, and
they're not Muslim anymore.
Those communities did not last whatsoever.
So just sociologically, historically, if you're not actively,
not just trying to preserve, and we shouldn't
confuse preserving the faith with being insulated and
being isolated and being far away from everybody.
No, but if you're not doing da'wah,
if you're not trying to spread the message
of Islam and invite people to Islam, then
you're probably not going to last that long,
A.
B, you might not be sincere.
Because let's be frank, if you really thought
that this deen is Allah's final word, message,
epistle, whatever you want to say, that it's
guidance for all mankind, if you had something
that would save other people's lives, and especially
their afterlife, and you kept it all to
yourself, that action kind of shows that you
don't actually believe that.
Let's give a materialistic example.
If we get COVID-19 coming down the
pipeline, and somebody had the cure with them,
they discovered it, okay, what would it show
about the state of their heart and their
sincerity towards other people if they kept it
all to themselves?
That might be even a criminal charge, that
might be criminal neglect.
You had the potential to save people, and
you decided not to, for whatever reason.
Well, if you really believe that Islam is
going to put you in the afterlife, and
that it is good for all people in
all times, which Allah tells us, and the
Prophet ﷺ tells us, then you have to
prove that with your actions.
And in order to prove that with your
actions, or what it looks like to prove
that with your actions, is to try to
call the people around you to Islam.
Not to duck it, not to hide out,
not to be unnoticeable, not to, whatever.
If you're going to be in a hotel,
or at work, or with people, colleagues, classmates,
they should know that you're Muslim.
And you should be ready to answer basic
questions and clarify things.
And you should realize that you're always being
watched, and you're always a representative of Islam.
You have an exceptional duty, actually.
It's easy to be a random Muslim person
in Jordan and Egypt, and it's not easy
to be in those places because there's other
things that is going on there.
But in the sense that when there's an
expectation that everybody's Muslim, people don't take it
as representative of Islam if you act out
or act in a negative way.
But in a place where there's so few
Muslims, and Islam is something that's so foreign,
people are going to take that, whatever you
do, as representative of Islam.
If you cut somebody off on the road,
or if you're road raging at somebody, or
if you're impolite, or if you're belligerent, or
anything, they're going to think that that represents
Islam.
So that's just the basic fact of life.
So people who are going to be in
these lands have to understand that it is
a land and this is a nuance that
I wish more people understood.
Everyone always talks about hijrah.
If you have a specific situation where you
or your family are going to leave Islam,
if you don't make hijrah, then you should
make hijrah.
If you can find a place, and it's
really in one of the scholars, he put
it very good when he said, it really
takes specific information, specific information about where you're
at to the specific place that you intend
to go.
We're not talking countries, we're talking about the
city, the neighborhood.
But there's a whole other discussion that the
scholars talked about living as a minority in
a non-Muslim land, which is ribat, which
is this idea that we're holding it down.
We are holding down, we're on the frontier,
maybe we could call it like that.
We are the frontiersmen and the frontier women
of bringing Allah's guidance to places where it's
not established yet.
And that's a serious thing and a praiseworthy
thing.
So that's just like our orientation.
And we talked about how the United States
and its society, it's a consumerist society, it's
a neoliberal capital, late capitalist society.
It's got a lot of methods, mechanisms, and
means to lull you to sleep.
You've got your Netflix, and you've got your
this addiction, you're that addiction, and you've got
your entertainment, and you've got your credit card
debt, and you've got your mortgage, and you've
got everything that keeps you down and keeps
you sedate.
You don't own anything, and so you have
to work twice as hard.
Maybe you've got two jobs to keep it
going, to make basic things.
You don't have any time left over.
You don't have any time left over for
dawah.
That's a problem.
You're too busy catching your shows or whatever
it is, scrolling YouTube or scrolling Instagram to
do any dawah.
If you look at your phone and you
check how much time you spend on these
apps, imagine if you put that time into
dawah once a week, twice a month.
It doesn't have to be crazy.
So this is all we're talking about.
A lot of people forget that, and this
is a primary responsibility that we have.