Yusha Evans – The Concept of God In Islam

			A
		

			similar manner him In the name of Allah, Who is the most Gracious, the Most Merciful. hamdu Lillahi
Rabbil alameen all praise or gratitude or thanks are deserving and belong to Allah, the One who
controls everything that exists
		

			or shall do La ilaha illa Allah and I bear witness that there is nothing to be worshipped except the
one true Creator of all things.
		

			Wha hoo luxury Cara and he is uniquely alone and he has no equal what I should do and Mohammed Abu
rasuluh and I bear witness that Mohammed is indeed his servant and his last and final messenger. How
is everyone? Good.
		

			Tired of worship? My first go home
		

			before we begin, how many guests Do we have with us here who are not Muslim right now? Please raise
your hand so I can know that you here have a few Okay, how many of you this would be your first time
ever visiting a mosque
		

			okay for for you guys. How does it feel? Being surrounded by all these terrorists? I mean, Muslims
Excuse me.
		

			For I've been watching too much fox news today.
		

			No, in reality,
		

			I hope they've you've been made to feel welcome here. If you have not been except apologies from
this community, from me on their behalf. We are supposed to treat guests in Islam. There are rulings
for almost everything in our religion and guests is one of those things that are impressed upon so
much that we are to treat our guests so kindly. One companion said that our Prophet Mohammed
stressed upon us so much the treatment of guests that he thought that they would inherit from us. So
we have to treat guests very, very honorably, as we would treat someone our own close family
members. So we hope that you've received that cordiality from us. Hopefully, you've received some
		

			southern hospitality along with it, we are in Nashville. I'm a southern boy born and bred in South
Carolina. So I know about all about Southern I lost my train. quite a long time ago, I left South
Carolina, you know, a very long time ago. But I hope that you've received not only some southern
hospitality, but some Islamic hospitality.
		

			And hopefully, if you have any questions at the end, we can answer them for you the best of our
abilities. It's a bit tough to do talks when there is a mixed group of Muslims and non Muslims
because you have to try to find a way to make things beneficial for all parties.
		

			But what I'm going to try to do is be very simple, but be very intricate about the simplicity of the
belief system in Islam, about the one whom we worship.
		

			Because when I first heard about Islam, back in the late 90s, before I accepted Islam, accepted
Islam in 1998, I was not born and raised Muslim, I was born and raised a Methodist. I accepted Islam
in the winter of 1998.
		

			Before becoming a Muslim, I had the conception and been had been taught that Muslims worshipped a
completely different and unique God, whom they called a law. And I was also taught that he lived in
a box in the desert in Saudi Arabia, and that he was symbolized by the moon. And you know, all of
these week, there was a lot of weird things. I heard about this, a lot that this Muslims worshipped.
		

			When I came to learn about Islam, and the more that I've learned about this concept, the more
beautiful It's become to me. And I'm going to try to break that down for you. I'm going to try to
break three things down for you tonight, and for our Muslim audience as well. These three things are
uniquely important, they are of paramount importance in our religion. I think the Imam is even
teaching after fudger, a book written about these three things called fella follow suit. Three,
three principles that every Muslim has to know because it's paramount. Number one, what do we
believe about our Lord? What do we believe about our Prophet? And what do we believe about our
		

			religion? Because these are the three things that we as Muslims believe will be questioned about
when we go to our graves and based on our answers to those questions, we will either have a good
ending of our life into the next life or it will be bad. So I want to discuss these three things.
The first of them being what do Muslims believe, about Allah, God, because it's the reason why
Muslims use the word Allah rather than God. And a lot of people will say that they're synonymous and
they're not. They're not they're not synonymous. They are used interchangeably, but they mean two
different things. They mean two different things.
		

			For instance, the word God can connote a lot of things
		

			different ideas in the minds of human beings. If you were to ask a Hindu What does God mean to them
it would be something totally different than what a Christian believes God means to them and to what
		

			a Muslim believes God and some people have their own ideas they've made up their their these new age
religions God has become something totally different. So that word God can have a connotation in
people's minds, in people's minds.
		

			That word God is also falling fault to the English language, the English language being a new
language has linguistic issues. When it comes to God, God is a word that can be made pearl can
become gods, it can be made feminine, can become goddesses, Goddess, gods or goddesses and things of
that nature. So this, this word is very interchangeable. So the reasons why the Muslims used the
word Allah, there's a reason why. And it's due to the language and its construct in Arabic.
		

			There is a word synonymous for God in the Arabic language is a word that that doesn't mean God in
the Arabic language. What word is that brothers sisters, ILA is a word called Illa, which means
anything that is given worship, anything that is considered to be given worship, and that can
produce harm or benefit for the person. And that can be anything, I can take this little thing here
this little ornament, I could take it home, I could give it worship. And I could think that it
brings me benefit or it could do me harm. And this in the linguistic sense, becomes anila becomes a
god, it becomes a god to me. And this has been true throughout the history. The people at the time
		

			of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him, they had many of these gods, many of them, they had over
300 of them. And sometimes they would create their own God, they would fashion it out of clay and
worship it. Some one companion said that one time I had nothing to make a God out of so I made one
out of dates. And I worshipped it until I became hungry, and I had nothing left to eat, and I ate
it. You know, this was this was their, their their belief system, but they would create their own
God their own Illa they would have a personal Allah in their home, that they would worship they
thought brought them benefit or harm.
		

			But when we say Allah, we are saying, Al Illa v God, we are giving some proper connotation to the
one who we worship. Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah is a word that is constructed to mean the Creator of
the heavens and earth. And it is a word that linguistically has its own
		

			rulings, it cannot be made plural, it cannot be made, it cannot be changed from its construct, it
cannot be more than one it is singular. It is neither masculine or feminine in and Arabic language
that's miraculous as well, because most words, especially proper words, they have a masculine or
feminine tone to them, but the word Allah is neither is neither, it cannot be changed, it is the
God. So when a Muslim says Allah, we are speaking of the only one who created the heavens and earth
and who upholds it by his power, that's who we worship. So that's why Muslims will often use that
word a lot, we will often use that word a lot in terms of or instead of saying, God, we and we
		

			become habitual, it's saying it habitual it's saying it so I hope that makes sense that word a lot
only in the mystic sense. singling out the Creator of the heavens and the earth is the one to whom
we worship, there is no question in our mind, of what that means what that means. Now, what do we
believe about Allah? This could get very lengthy, but I'm just gonna divided into the three most
simplistic categories, according to the Islamic teachings. And is that number one, we believe a law
is one and it's called the knee and meaning that we believe God is uniquely one, he is not one like
the number one, you see the number one is also a interchangeable yes or no, I can manipulate the
		

			number one, I can add another one to it, it comes to, I can take away half of it and it becomes one
half or one third, that number is manipulatable. And there
		

			is a
		

			word in the Arabic language that means one word is that
		

			one word, and again, that's a manipulated number. I add another to it, it becomes its name. If we
refer to Allah as Whitehead, he's known as alpha one v one v one. But when God revealed about
himself in the Quran in a very short chapter, he said, cool, say about me, whoa, Allahu. I had a had
I had is a different word. It means one, it means one. We believe that God is one but we believe
that he is ahead and is a number that
		

			That is not like any other one night like any other than oneness. And when God spoke about himself
in the Old Testament, he said, I, the Lord your God, he said, he wrote through the I, the Lord your
God and I said, which also is very similar to this word grammatically, the word ahead if I were to
take ahead and add it to another hand what happens? What do I get?
		

			What do I get? You get ahead, because I had signifies a oneness that cannot be added to, it cannot
be subtracted from it cannot be multiplied, it is unique of its own, and we say that oneness belongs
to the Creator. So oneness like no other oneness. He is one uniquely alone by himself. He does not
share his oneness with anyone else. He doesn't share what his attributes and his power and his
ability to create in his ability to harm or to benefit mankind belongs solely to him alone. So we
are truly monotheistic in that sense, as that we see our Creator Allah as uniquely one, unlike any
other oneness that exists in the universe. That makes sense as how we look at our Creator. Now,
		

			within his oneness, it also becomes very
		

			broken down. And this is one of the things that I loved about Islam when I accepted Islam in 1998,
was this very codified, our religion is very cool. I'm a person who is kind of a perfectionist at
heart. My wife says, I have an OCD. She says, I have full fledged OCD, I don't think it's that far
gone. But I'm a person who likes things a certain way. I like things orderly, I like things to have
some system and Islam fulfills that within me because it's very systematic. Everything is laid out
for us. When it comes to the oneness of Allah, his oneness is divided into three major categories.
And these three major categories are beautiful when you understand them. And even as Muslims, when
		

			we grasp the understanding of what these categories mean, it changes the dynamics of our
relationship with the one whom we worship. Because when you go to the grave when we as Muslims go to
the grave, we believe that there will be two angels that will come and question us, they will sit us
up, and the first thing they will ask us is what?
		

			Man rongbuk? Who was your Lord? Who did you worship? Who did you serve? Who did you serve? And all
of us, at some point, have this as Muslims, we believe that we're going to have no problem saying or
Allah that my Lord was alone, we see that's kind of problematic, because you need to really
understand what that means first, because this is not going to be just like a normal questioning.
This is an interrogation after your soul has been taken from your body and you are in complete
stress. And this is a whole different, you need to really have something firm in your heart. What is
known as scholars is the karma to genuinely be given a steadfast and firm heart to answer this
		

			question properly. And how can you speak so boldly about someone whom you didn't really know? Well,
because the angels are going to ask you Even if you say my load is a lot, they're gonna say, how did
you know that? What is your evidence for that you need to show and prove. So when we say that Allah
is one, we say that he is in he is one in terms of number one is Ruby, Ruby, meaning that he is the
ROM or the lowered, sustainer, cherisher, maintainer controller of everything that exists. He is the
one who maintains everything within existence, and we believe that he does so with no effort. It
takes no effort on his behalf, he doesn't become tired. He doesn't have to exert for this, he does
		

			it with no effort, meaning the entire universe, whatever exists, he maintains it with no effort.
When we say that Allah is our rub, he is our Lord. We say that in an attempt to understand that
everything is because of him. Everything if we were to someone were to ask me,
		

			Why is the sky blue? Why is the sky blue? There are many scientific reasons behind this and many
sciences have explained why the sky is blue. But simplistically in Islam, if you were to ask me, Why
is the sky blue? My initial response is that because Allah is
		

			Allah is wrong, because he sustains and maintains that he has decreed for it to be blue. So
therefore, it's blue. You might understand the process by which he has made it blue. That still
doesn't change that he's the one who made it blue. Why is grass green? Because
		

			when I pick up food to eat, I believe as a Muslim that the reason I am able to eat the reason I have
food in front of me and it's been given to me as a provision to eat is because Allah is because he
has given me the ability, that ability to do so. You see, this is something that is supposed to
create within the mind of a Muslim
		

			sense of ease, a sense of ease. Because when you understand that your Lord is in control, then you
don't stress as much you don't stress as much.
		

			For instance, if you get behind and I'm not trying to say that you should is equating a low with a
driver of a car, but I'm just trying to give you some mental understanding, you get behind the wheel
of a car with a person whom is known to be a reckless driver. Yeah, not to be a reckless driver. And
this is just about every car I get into in Saudi Arabia, you always have this fear that they drive
like mad men over there.
		

			Hmm.
		

			No, no, no, I'm talking about him.
		

			But you know, there are some people you get in the car with you putting on the seatbelt and you're
paying attention. You're watching what they're doing. Because these these, this guy is going to
drive like a nut. And you would have worry and stress about that trip, correct? Yes, you'd be some
little bit worried. But now what if you get behind the wheel of somebody who you know, to be the
best driver, this person is someone who pays attention on the road, he he's always very, very
adamant about the way he drives, you wouldn't stress as much you might even sit back, relax and take
a nap. Because you know, you're going to get to your destination safely. When when a Muslim
		

			understands completely, that Allah is wrong, that Allah is in control, that he maintains and
sustains all of the fears of his creation, then you don't worry as much because you know, if
something bad happens to you, you become
		

			you become submissive to that and have solace in it that Allah is Robert, he has decreed it to be so
for whatever reason he has choose, therefore I'm going to trust it, I'm going to trust it. So when
we say that our law is wrong, we say that he is wrong. And the reason why we say that as a part of
tawheed, as that is because that we believe that only he is wrong. No one else controls the affairs
of the heavens and earth. No one else is has the ability to give me food and drink and air and all
of the no one except the one who created me. Even if it's another person who comes and gives me a
plate of food, the original source of that is the one who created all of the means for it to exist
		

			in the first place. So we say that a lot is that he is one that he is one in his lordship. He's one
in his lordship, that gives you an understanding that you don't need to stress so much about your
life and things that happen. You plan and you try the best to live your life, what happens this out
of your control, you don't worry about it, you just do what you can within the means that are given
to you.
		

			Secondly, secondly, we say that Allah is one in terms of his earlier here, in terms of him being the
only Allah The only God, that the reason why we worship Him, as the only true God is because he
deserves to be worshipped as the only true God because He alone created creation, he alone
fashioned, being the mother of my womb, he alone did all of these things. Therefore, if He alone is
the source of all existence, then he deserves and have the right to demand that that which he
created, worships Him. Therefore we serve him in that and we worship only him alone. As a Muslim, we
don't give anything that's considered worship, to anything else to anyone else, except he who
		

			created all things, anything that's considered worship, prayer, sacrificing, anything, anything that
a person would consider to be worshipped. As a Muslim, we are not allowed to give that to anything
other than he who created all things, because he deserves to have that. And everything other than
Him, is not deserving of that they're not worthy of that, because they themselves are in need are
part of the creation. So therefore, we would not worship something or give worship to something
which they themselves are created in part of the need of the robe of creation, we worship the love
of the creation, so we worship Him alone.
		

			The third thing, the third part or the third major breakup of the oneness of Allah is in terms of
what is known as a smart one is defects in his names and attributes, meaning that attributes
qualities that belong to God belong to Him alone. And those qualities are not like any one else's
qualities and they are not similar or have any similar to to anything else. If we say that Allah is
alcoholic, the creator, He alone is the creator. No one else shares that with him. If we say that
Allah is a rough man, He is the Most Merciful. Yes, people can have Rama, people can have mercy with
one another. But it's not a perfect mercy, like the mercy of the Creator. When we say He is
		

			merciful, he's merciful in the most perfect sense. There's no fault in it whatsoever. Human beings
even if we're good in and merciful and kind to one another. There's always going to be fault in it
because we're human beings. We're not always going to do the right thing. But when we say that,
there is an
		

			attribute are about our Creator, we say that he alone owns that attribute in the most perfect sense.
In the most perfect sense. We say that always I will do these loving, he's loving towards his
creation. But it's in the most perfect sense of the word. It's in the most perfect fashion, of the
understanding, even to the point where we really can't comprehend it. But we know it's the most
perfect form of it. So and when it comes to his, his
		

			qualities, we believe that our Lord, what he says about himself, we affirm that for him, If Allah in
the Quran, or in the authentic Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him, says that he has
hands does not say that he has hands.
		

			does Allah say that he has hands? Yes, we say that Allah has hands, but they're not like our hands.
You can't equate them to the hands of human beings, but they are be fitting him and we don't even
try to interpret it. We don't try to comprehend it. Because this little mind here, this little bitty
brain is not possible and is not capable of comprehending how the Creator is. We say that our
Creator has eyes, he speaks and things of that nature, things that human beings do, but they're not
the same. They're not the same. We don't see our Creator like us. This is Islam breaks off from
other religions that we do not believe that God created us in His image. We do not believe that we
		

			believe that God is Allah is himself. Everything about him is unlike anything else. It's not like
anything good in his creation. We believe you have Allah, Who is alcoholic, who is the creator, and
everything else is known as my loop that which is created, and the two are not alike. The two are
not alike, that which is created is not like the one who created it. Does that make sense? We
distinguish that we distinguish that. And we believe that our Creator is not within his creation. He
is above his creation. He is above his creation. And yes, we do affirm as Muslims for our Muslim
brothers and sisters here that Allah is a above his creation. Yes, we say that allows above it. I've
		

			had so many people rely on me when I say these types of things on my Twitter feed and things of that
nature, that you've given a lot of place and therefore you've done all this and support. No, we
believe that Allah is above his creation, because the Quran says he created the heavens and earth in
six days from his tower. And then he ascended above his throne. When the Prophet Muhammad peace be
upon him. One of the companions came and said, I have a servant girl and I slept her you got angry
and slept or what he should eat? What should he do? He said, Bring the girl to me. The girl was
brought to him. The Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him asked her, where is Allah? What did she do?
		

			If I know what she did, she pointed up. He said, she is a believer set her free. She's a believer
set her free. So we say that Allah is above his creation, he's above his creation is not within his
creation, he is separate from it. So these are the things that we believe about our Lord, that He
alone is the creator of all things. He alone is the Sustainer of all things. He alone is the
maintainer of the universe. Therefore, we worship Him because He is the one who deserves to be
worshipped. He's the one who deserves to be worshipped. And based on that principle, we go into the
next category, the next category, based on that principle, we believe, and it is only logical that
		

			if God created everything, if God created everything, then he must have created a system by with
which to govern it. Does that not make logical sense? If there were no system that govern the
universe, if there were no rhyme or reason to the entire universe whatsoever, and it was in total
chaos, it would have destroyed itself by now. It would have turned into shambles. By now. There is
an order if you look at the universe, and I'm a person who loves
		

			astrophysics, I love to look at the universe and how it is governed. And the little that we
understand that we only understand about 5% of the known universe. The other 95% is unknown to us. A
lot of it's what's called dark matter that we don't even grasp exactly what it is. We know that it's
there. We're not figured out what it is yet. They've spent billions of dollars in the CERN
supercollider to try to figure out what that dark matter is, but they've not gotten there yet. And
looking for it. They call it the God Particle. I don't think it's gonna be found. But we believe
that is governed by a system. It is governed by a system. Everything has a system. There's a reason
		

			why the sun rises from the east sets in the west. There's a reason why the sun is a certain distance
from the planet earth because if it was a little bit closer
		

			No life a little bit farther, no life, there is this moon however it got there from an asteroid that
broke off and tore part of the earth. But what however, that Moon is, is paramount for sustaining
human life, that moon were to disappear tomorrow, it would be a massive problem on Earth, we
wouldn't survive very long without it. So we believe all of these things are part of the governance
of the Creator, for his creation, for his creation for us to exist, he knew he was going to put us
on this planet. So it had to be designed in such a way that it was going to sustain the life which
he wanted to create. So everything has a system
		

			as well as human beings, but we believe the difference between the rest of the creation and the
human beings is that God gave them both a system, the rest of the creation just follows the system.
They don't question it, they don't think about it, they just they just follow the system. They just
do what they're supposed to do. Everything else just does what it's designed to do. The human being
was given something called a free will, we were given a choice. Yeah, we were given a choice to
choose refuse, it was a heavy burden that we didn't really understand the moment we accepted this
choice, but it is part of the human creation is that we are allowed to choose. But we still believe
		

			that it is part of God's justice, that if you are going to create human beings, placed them on this
earth, tell them that at the end of your life, you will die, and that you will be resurrected, and
you will face judgment and either go to heaven or *, then he should have given us a system by
with which to get there. Because if he would have just said, figure it out on your own, who then any
form of judgment, any form of resurrection, any form of Hellfire and paradise would have been
unjust, he should have sent us all to heaven. Because we did the best that we could we had we
figured it out. We did we we did what we can do? No, there must be one system. It's like, if I were
		

			to give you a computer, for to give you a brand new Mac, and you were to turn it on, and there's no
operating system, you would come back to me and say, hold on a second, this thing doesn't work.
There's no there's no OS. And I were to tell you look, you just make it work. You know, I mean, you
figured out yourself, you would tell me how to there's no way there has to be a system designed
specifically for this and like I just put any system on it. No, no, no, you have to put us in a
system designed for it. Right.
		

			This is the way that the human being there's a system for us. And if we don't use the system that
was created for us, there's problems, there's going to be problems. We believe that that system is
called Islam. That system is called Islam. Now that word Islam has, unfortunately been targeted with
a very negative connotation. The word Islam has become synonymous with terrorism, with wickedness
with killing, with murder, all this, the media does a good job of playing with the words that
they've been. And it's nothing new. They've been doing this since media existed, we're not. And we
as Muslims are not the first community to face this. We're not the first community to face this.
		

			Native Americans have a lot more to complain about than most Muslims, when it came to
		

			extremism and racism and, and terrorism quite a bit to complain about. As a matter of fact, African
Americans went through a lot more than then than we will ever understand yet here in America, the
the Jews went through the same things when they came here, the Chinese, the Japanese went through
some of the same things. So it's always there's always kind of been a scapegoat for America to push
forward some of its foreign policy and politics. But nevertheless,
		

			things are happening, this Lamb has put in a negative connotation. So what does this land mean?
Islam is a very simple understanding if it's put properly in its right context, the word Islam is
also an Arabic word. So it has to be understood from that context, because a lot of people will tell
you Islam means peace. And that's right and wrong. It's right. It's, it's, well, it's not wrong.
It's right. But it's not completely right. It's not was not if I were to tell you that Islam means
peace, then a very intelligent question for you would be then why are Muslims not living in peace?
You know, I mean, if you have Islam, your countries are very peaceful. I'm telling you right now you
		

			go to Muslim countries, they're not the most peaceful places on the planet. So why is it that
Muslims are not peaceful? Let me tell you what,
		

			Islam the root word of it doesn't mean peace, Selim selama. But that root word could also mean
sincerity. That root word could also mean servitude, that root word could also mean submission. And
it also could mean peace.
		

			It also could mean peace. So when the word constructed Islam, what it means is a codified system, a
codified system of servitude, a codified system of servitude to the creator sincerely in submission
to him, in order to have peace in this life, in order to have peace in the next life. That's what
Islam is. Islam is the operating system, a codified operating system for the human being sincere
		

			Really submitting yourself to the Creator, so that the final result would be peace in this life and
peace in the next life. If someone were to tell me that asked me, Why are Muslims not living
peacefully then I would say it's because we're using the wrong operating system right now, we're not
using the complete system of Islam, we might have a modified operating system that we're calling
Islam. But there are bits and pieces missing, which make malfunctioning hardware, make money if
like, if you put a half OS in there, it's some things are not going to work, right. And that's what
we have in our countries right now we have a modified system that is not complete, therefore, it's
		

			not doing its job. If you look back at the lifetime of the Prophet Mohammed is our dear brother Abu
buddy was talking about, he established a very peaceful environment, very peaceful environment, and
Muslims conquered a large portion of the civilized world for a very long time. And if you look at
the history, unbiased history, about the history of the Muslim Empire, when it ruled over Spain,
when it ruled over Europe, when it ruled over Arabia when it ruled over northern Africa, it was an
extremely peaceful time for the world Jews lived under they would they Jews were migrating under to
live under the Islamic system. Christians when Muslims took over Jerusalem, asked them not to leave
		

			just and one of the things they want. He said, Please do not ever put this back into the hands of
the Jews. You keep control. If you want control, you can have it just make sure you always run it.
And there was a very peaceful time until the time of the Crusades. So when the system is put