The TRUTH about Navigating Differences

This is an all hands on deck moment the issues that are happening you see what's erupting in schools around the country go and read up on the Equality Act. And if it were to pass what sort of existential threat it would pass to Muslims and people of all religions Bismillah Alhamdulillah wa Salatu was Salam ALA. In late May, I was contacted by the folks who have organized the Navigating differences document, I was asked to sign it. After I review the content, I decided to sign it since then a lot of people have erred criticisms for this document, online and elsewhere. And I would like to take this video to respond to some of those criticisms, which I think the vast majority of which

are coming from a place of misunderstanding and hopefully not but potentially prejudice. I want to foreground this video by saying that I have no skin in the game on either side, I'm dedicated to the truth. And if someone were to produce evidence for me that I would be convinced by that shows that this statement is problematic or against Islam in any sort of way that I would happily retract my signature from this document and request that it'd be done so But to date, I have not seen any convincing evidence nor arguments that would warrant that decision. Some people might also say why haven't I invited critics to come on to a platform, whether it's a stream or this channel or

somebody else's channel to sort of have a quote unquote, open discussion? And the short answer to that is that I am not here for your entertainment. I am here to find the truth. And many of the automat, throughout the history of Islamic Scholarship have warned against adversarial debate like scenarios. Why? Because adversarial debate like scenarios are not the most conducive forum or format to reach the truth. So if I were to go on somebody else's channel, or invite somebody to my channel or to the YouTube community channel, then we will be in a one v one scenario, he goes would likely to get involved, that person has an increased stake in not looking embarrassed and not being

humiliated and might even reach for things that are not true in order to defend their argument. And that temptation would be there for me as well. So that's why anybody who's been following my stuff since the very beginning, since I was a student in Medina, they should know that I do not do debates, I do not do debates at all, even if I recognize the limited utility of debates when it comes to debating kofod or debating sort of atheists or even somebody who's Indian, someone who's rejecting the Hadith for example, somebody who's trying to change the religion in an obvious way from an claiming to be a Muslim, I can understand a limited usefulness to the sort of arrangement of

a debate. However, when it comes to to people who claim to be at a seminar or claim to or even demonstrate their commitment to at some level Jamar, I do not find debate to be very, very useful, and I shun it. The second thing to note when it comes to why not have a quote unquote, open conversation with critics is that many of the social media influencers who are not students of knowledge and are not Imams or Mashgiach, actually, they have a conflict of interest when it comes to their platforms and how they're set up. For those who are in any doubt when it comes to the Eurocom. SG YouTube channel, I do not and I have never ever, ever seen a single penny from what this

channel makes when it comes to ad revenue or any sort of anything, it goes directly to the masjid and to the overhead of what it takes to produce this content for the people who are filming to the you know, the set and all the equipment and things like that I have been very, very deliberate to never accept a single penny from anything that comes through YouTube, or any sort of social media platform, whether it's Patreon or whatever, because I want to stay independent, I do not want to be compromised by sort of an audience of people spurring me on are encouraging me to respond in this way or respond in that way refute this or refute that, or engage with this person or engage with

that person. So you will never see me do such things. And I certainly wouldn't get on a for example, a live stream and encourage people to give me sort of super chats or whatever so that I read their comments out loud live that people who are in that scenario might need to worry about whether they have a conflict of interests or not. However, I have no such conflict of interest. When it comes to criticisms of the document, I have gone through many of the criticisms that people have have waged or levied at the document and I have grouped them into categories starting with the most significant and then trailing down to those of lesser significance. So when it comes to the most significant

criticisms of the document, or the ones that might seem to have the most validity, they circulate around the idea of understanding who is speaking through this document and who is being addressed. And therefore what the purpose of this document is. We'll take those one at a time. So when it comes to who is speaking, okay, there were several flaws of reasoning or erroneous reasoning practices that were going on some people they dismissed the document and they succumb to their own prejudices simply by scrolling down to the bottom of the screen and viewing some of the signatories so they would call it yes or call these document are almost so the man's document or Jonathan Brown's

document, but they didn't show you some of the other people who signed it, such as Professor Abdullah ibn Hamid Ali from zaytuna College

or someone such as shake? That would really okay, if the assumption is that we can just go and cherry pick some of the names from the bottom and we can tell what this document is about, and we can dismiss the document wholesale, then why wouldn't we go to those? Or how do we account for the existence of signatories or people who have politics very, very different from those individuals who are being cherry picked and paraded around as somehow representative of the document, I shared a stage with shake that will lead for the first time at Ignite just the other week and he was blasting the left and the political left and the Democratic Party from the stage and he has no scruples in

doing so. And the same with Dr. Abdullah Ali, as he is somebody who's an outspoken critic of the left, we also have people like Stefan Mubi, invade we have people like Dr. Sharifah totally people who have been speaking out against the LGBTQ agenda since the beginning. Okay, so it is not possible to simply go to the bottom and cherry pick names and try to make it look like this document is represented by some of the names and therefore you don't have to take the arguments seriously. That is sloppy reasoning, and it is not a valid argument. Furthermore, that is not an argument that we find or a line of reasoning that is not valid when it comes to Islam and the Quran, because when it

comes to Islam, we are for the truth, no matter who says and Allah subhanaw taala actually affirms us in the Quran in surah to NEMA that surah number 27 Verse 34, when there's a they're telling the story of Sabah and Saudi man and Allah azza wa jal says call that in Al mo Luca either Jaffa Lou Correa 10 F do wotja aliou As Lisa Avila, Waka daddy KFR don't so in this particular situation, they're debating whether they need to go to work or not. And the line here she says Saba, who is a disbeliever of Sabah is a sun worshiper, she is a Malika and she says that when people enter into a village, they ruin it. And they make she's basically teasing out the consequences of going to war is

that the best of those people end up being based or killed or displaced and whatnot and Allah subhanaw taala does not rebuke her due to the identity of who she is or due to the fact that she is most Rekha or a sun worshiper, Allah azza wa jal, according to one of the interpretations of the Moto city and says Walker that aka follow him, and that is affirmation that what she said is correct. So here we have an old slogan, the Quran where Allah azza wa jal verifies the thing that is being said, without even looking at the identity of the one who said this is closer to truth. And this is how people should approach these sorts of issues. If you look at the statement with this in

mind with these two things in mind that we're supposed to look at the statement objectively and not pay attention to necessarily the person who said it, especially since there are people of all sorts of different political persuasions that have signed this document, it is not possible to tell the level of involvement that the various signatories had with this document, you cannot go there's nothing there's no evidence within the website, the Navigating differences website or the document itself that will tell you who is the brains behind this, this document, who is the person who have crafted the language and who is merely signing was pushed in front of them, and they signed it, you

can't tell was it Jonathan Brown, who wrote the entire document and passed it to shake that would lead to sign or was it vice versa, you have absolutely no way of telling that. And so you have to be fair, and you have to be objective, and you are left with nothing but to look at the statement itself and judge it on its own merit without trying to dismiss it cheaply by looking at those who signed it. The second issue we're going to talk about so that was the first dealing with who is speaking now we're going to talk about who is being spoken to and that is intimately tied to the purpose of this document in the first place. Many of the people in fact, most of the people who

criticize the Navigating differences document, they seemed to have an unmet expectation. They seemed to expect that this document was going to be similar to the scenario when a prophet approaches their people and they are giving in calm and they are giving a warning and a rebuke to their people to stop their wicked ways and to turn back to repentance. If that was your expectation going into this document, then this document reads as weak it reads as begging it seems to be appealing to all the wrong sorts of things to constitutional rights rather than engaging sort of the morality of the issue and the faulty grounds upon which they are basing their argument. However, that is not the

only type of encounter that we find our prophets engaging in. And if you go to the story of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa salam, the Sierra, you will find that there were other scenarios in which he did not simply interact with his people in the context of delivering such income. One of those scenarios was the Treaty of Hubei BIA. Another one of those scenarios was the Constitution of Medina itself and we can quibble as to whether constitution was the proper translation of that word. But however, the important point is that when he got to Medina after the Hijrah the agreement that he made with the people of Medina, including them, the Jews, if you look at how the Treaty of the

hood idea of who they be, I went down the province of Allahu alayhi wa sallam was dictating to Audi Radi Allahu Anhu what to write on the document and He began by writing in the name of Allah and then he said he used the title Rasul Allah. Okay, so Allahu Allahu wa salam, and the Qureshi man who was a disbeliever, who was a polytheist. He objected to this law.

Language and he said if we believe that you are the Messenger of Allah, then we wouldn't even be having this discussion in the first place. And so the prophets of Allahu alayhi wa salam instructed Adi Radi Allahu Anhu to cross out his title Rasul Allah salAllahu Alaihe Salam and instead, right Mohammed Abdullah Ali Radi Allahu Anhu out of his Taqwa and piety was hesitant to do so he couldn't bring himself to do it. So the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam asked Ali to point out on the paper where it was written since he could not read and he struck that out himself. Okay, where's the encoder in this document? Where is the bowl the strident language in this document, the Prophet

sallallahu alayhi wa salam crossed out his own title, which he is knows that he is entitled to and relinquished it because it's a political document in which he is being hermeneutic he has to establish common ground with the other side. Similarly, when they put together the Constitution of Medina, there was no income in the Constitution of Medina, it was a political document in which the people who are migrating to to Medina and the Muslims, we're going to detail the terms upon which they would live together and peacefully coexist. And we'll get to that in a moment. The sin of Croatia, of course, was worse than the sin of what many people in our society are going through now

should is the absolute worst sin it's far worse than Liwa. Okay. And the Hoja applied to the Quran, they understood that this was a genuine Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam they understood they were watching as the Quran was being revealed to them, they were seeing miracles in their life and in our time, there is no hijab, that as like this, they You cannot compare the level of Hoja apply to the college to the people who are living now. So is it reasonable to expect in college and BA and these sort of bold strident language from something which might perhaps be simply a political document simply a political statement, something that is closer to trying to come to a common word, I would

posit and assert that it is an unreasonable expectation Allah subhanaw taala. Furthermore, in the Quran, he uses common ground when he addresses the CO fault and especially if those who followed are from the People of the Book, Allah azza wa jal, he says fully al Kitab to Allah Illa COVID-19 sola in vain and rabbinical Allah nabooda illa Allah wa Nasri kabhi Kobe he shaped to the end of the eye so Allah is bound to otter deconstructs the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa salam to specifically say oh people of the book come to a common word Kadima, tin. So, a common word between us and you is finding a common word between two people, one of which is on truth, and one of which is on

falsehood. Is this something that is against Islam, Allah subhanaw taala commands the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa salam to do it in this particular if he's even the content of what he's calling them to is something that they would agree to, because the Christians that are being addressed in this verse would not understand themselves to be violating Tawheed they understood themselves as monotheistic, they did not accept the idea that worshipping a three person God was something that violated Tawheed. And yet, even though we disagree and reject that understanding of so hated, we say that that is phony that is false, that is wrong, still allow us bound to audit cause us to come to a

common word. So how do we understand this document with a proper understanding this document as was later clarified by the the architects of this document was designed for school boards, it was designed for teachers, it was designed for principals, it was designed for superintendents, and it was designed for employers, if you are an employee or a student, or a teacher, and you are at a school in which you are being forced to participate in some sort of productivity, this document was made for you so that you could come to your employer or your school board or what have you, and use this to eke out a little bit of space for yourself to maintain your dignity and keep to your faith

and not have to participate in these sorts of activities. And this indeed, in the days and one week plus since this document has been signed and issued has been borne out by how people are using it, if you look and you follow on social media, various Muslims are quoting it, they're referring to it and they are using it for exactly these purposes, when they want to get out of something or they're not happy at the institutional suffocation and imposition that is going on, they are referring to this document and using it as it was intended to be used. Now, I will grant that it is a valid criticism that this is not clear enough that the purpose of this document was not made clear enough

from the beginning. And he goes to the Navigating differences website, all you have, it just goes right into the statement itself. And it doesn't prep you as to what the purpose of this document is. And I think that that is a valid criticism, I think that it would have been better, and inshallah they can still do it to make either a splash page for the website or to put at the top of the website that this is what this document is intended for. It is not intended to be addressing the abominations of the people performing abominations and sexual indecency and to sort of give a moral rebuke to what they're doing. It is not that type of document at all. And so to enter into reading

this document with those sorts of expectations are not valid and will set you up for disappointment. The next criticism had to do with appealing to constitutional rights. And the idea here was that if we appeal to the constitutional rights, it means that we are affirming the rights that they think that they're entitled to by the Constitution itself.

A sub point that was that can be tied to this argument was that the way things are going, courts will expand LGBTQ rights, meaning that if we appeal to constitutional rights, we are not only accepting all their current rights, but also their future rights as well. This criticism is factually wrong, and it misrepresents the current historical moment, let's go first to how it is factually wrong. First of all, the Constitution is not an LGBTQ friendly document full stop. If it were an LGBTQ friendly document, then there would be no need to reinterpret it in the first place to further their agenda of what they call rights, quote, unquote, which is what they're trying to do,

there would be no need for the Equality Act to be brought into Congress. And still it is failing Hamdulillah. But there will be no need to do all of this. Okay, it's not true also that LGBTQ rights will inevitably expand this is a false sense of how history is moving. We have recently seen how Catholics have spent decades lobbying and building capacity where and putting judges into place where that they were able to overturn Roe versus Wade, there is no sense and in fact, is up to the Supreme Court. And the way that the Supreme Court is currently constituted, it might be actually closer to the truth to expect them to perhaps overturn some of the rights quote unquote, rights that

have been given to LGBTQ quote unquote community up until this point, whether constitutional rights entail everything that LGBTQ agenda claims is precisely what everybody across the country is fighting about, it is not a done deal. So that has to do with how the criticism is factually wrong. Second, this criticism misrepresents the current historical moment in which we are situated, the Constitution is constantly being reinterpreted, and we are in fact fighting over this very interpretation. Because the discursive move that the LGBTQ agenda has attempted to deploy, they are trying to expand the quote unquote, rights by saying that anything short of affirmation and

celebration is an existential threat to them, that it implies violence upon them, or a denial of their very existence, that it's equivalent to hatred and violence externally, or at the very least contributing to the likelihood that they are going to commit suicide within this historical moment. This document that navigating differences document strikes at the heart of this argument and fundamentally challenges this claim by saying that the tactic they are using to expand their quote, unquote, rights is not synonymous with having to affirm it, that rejection and moral condemnation, et cetera, et cetera, is not equivalent to violence. And that is a very, very important point to

attempt to make. And it is within this context, and within this historical moment that the language of peaceful and harmonious coexistence must be interpreted, it means nothing more than our objection, as practicing believing Muslims, our objection to the LGBTQ agenda does not mean that people are going to be killed or beaten up, that is all that it means. And to interpret these words in any other context, and that is a stretch to say the least, and disingenuous to say the most ironically, if you don't see this distinction, or you don't register this distinction, you're actually accepting the LGBTQ definition of what it means to peacefully coexist. They're the ones

trying to tell us that to peacefully coexist means affirming them, it means celebrating them, and this document and what we are saying is precisely the opposite. Yes, we will peacefully coexist in the sense that you will not be physically harmed, no one is going to physically harm you. But we reject you, we reject what you stand for, we reject your morality, we reject the practices that you do building an entire identity around your desire all this we reject. And we are doubling down on the fact that this rejection does not entail any necessary physical violence upon you one of the more minor criticisms that was made in this vein was that do we have to make a statement about

living peacefully with every group? What about gamblers? What about drinker's, et cetera, et cetera? This is a very naive argument. And the people who made this argument should have already noticed that we do not have people constructing identities around the sins or these desires, we do not have people constructing political agendas around these sins and desires. The only thing that made it necessary is that this particular group of people are advocating and trying to make this one particular desire into an identity and then into an agenda political agenda that threatens our very existence as Muslims in in the West, there was also another problematic argument that was offered

that well, if we're going to go out of our way to say that no harm is going to come to anybody who is part of the LGBTQ quote unquote, community, then this is playing into a stereotype that Muslims are violent. No, that's not true at all. This is responding to their assertion that not affirming their agenda is tantamount to violence itself. Everything else in this document, almost every other criticism must be understood in light of these reflections. And I think that if you take this seriously that all of the other criticism, or at least the vast, vast, vast majority of the criticism that has been lobbied at this particular document

collapses collapses under scrutiny and is completely invalid and examples of poor and we hope not but potentially motivated reasoning, just a few loose ends. There is a lot of conjecture going on as to the motivations of particular individuals, there were claims that the people who made this document we're being deliberately vague that every good thing about this document was simply there insidiously, to let your guard down that this was just PR and that the history or track record of this individual or that individual indicated a bad motive. And I would like to remind the brothers and especially the students of knowledge, who might have fallen into doubt about this particular

document and the people who signed it that Allah azza wa jal criticizes too much conjecture and suspicion in the Koran when he says, Yeah, yo, hello, Dina. ammonoids attainable cathedra Mina Vaughn in Nevada, Lonnie Ethem, that it is not befitting and it's not appropriate for Muslims to have unreasonable and undue suspicion about each other or to pry into their motives. And if you think that the history of an individual or the track record of an individual is enough to determine what they're going to do in the future, then I wonder how you would have treated or thought or how the devil will lead or I will Soufiane or decrement, Abby gehele and the many people who actually

fought against the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam during his lifetime only to come around and accept the truth and be not only people who accepted the truth, but people who are some of the foremost Muslims and defended Islam and help spread it rather you should be remind yourselves that the Hadith of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam found in Sudan and certainly the Anwar Adam Jabba call of Allah Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and Ira Ha hoo be them Ben lamea, North Hatay at Meadow that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam he said that if somebody finds faults in his brother due to some sin that he committed, he will not die before he has committed

that same sin. If you are accusing others of being hypocrites, then it is feared for you that you will not pass away until you are a bit by hypocrisy itself. And we ask Allah subhanaw taala for cool heads and we ask Allah subhanaw taala for the ability to look at things objectively and to not be swayed by motivated arguments or bias or prejudice against anybody, regardless of who they are and their track record that we can look at these things in an objective way and evaluate them. And may Allah subhanaw taala assist us this is an all hands on deck moment. And I've said this before on other platforms, the issues that are happening, you see what's erupting in schools around the

country go and read up on the Equality Act. And if it were to pass what sort of existential threat it would pass to Muslims and people of all religions in the United States of America. This is an all hands on deck moment and some of the criticisms that have been levied and that have been waged are distractions and unnecessarily preventing us from coming together to try to tackle and push back against this thing and assure or try to affirm our ability to practice and spread the religion of Islam in the place that we live with Allah huzzah Ana, Salaam Alaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh